Why Polls Add Value to Your Website (+ How to Make One)

October 24, 2016

A poll is a great way to give your users something immediate, easy, and engaging to do as soon as they arrive on your organization’s website. Polls are simple and easy to create, but don’t underestimate them!


Polls and surveys are effective interactive content types because they’re essentially gates through which you can generate leads, but without feeling like that. A poll can create interesting interactions between your company and your audience, and at the same time it collects important insights on a particular topic close to your industry.


Attaching a lead form at the end of the poll or survey makes the interaction feel more natural – it’s a back-and-forth exchange, rather than a direct exchange before the beginning of the content experience.


A really good poll will grab your users’ attention and make them pause, think, react, and interact. If you can get an audience to do those four things, then you’re doing something right


Here’s how interactive polls can make it happen for your marketing strategy.


Polls Make You Pause


When the average user arrives at your page, they are likely tasked with reading and processing at a lot of information.


Placing a poll in a prominent location on your homepage is a good way to provide an easy actionable item for your users and engage them right away, so they don’t lose interest in what you have to offer.


It is crucial to make your poll visible and easy to find without being overbearing. Many websites make use of a poll on the sidebar, generally surrounded by a fair amount of whitespace to make it stand out.


B2BPollMarketo.png


Quibblo.com an online community that is centered around user-generated content, created a fun poll and placed it on the homepage. As you can see, this quiz fits into the bigger scheme of the web page, and it gives users a moment to pause before moving on to review the list of available content that follows.


Polls Make You Think


A good poll will ask a question that your users find genuinely interesting and want to discuss.


Choose timely topics that relate to your audience and target demographic. You can even get feedback and market research from your users and use the input to improve your features.


Polls Make You React


If you’ve selected a good question, your users are interested – now make sure you give them a voice. Consider your answer options carefully. People want to choose the answer that they most closely identify with, so make sure you provide a broad sampling of possibilities


For example, the poll below is a pre-event interactive survey for OMC’s Modern Marketing Experience in Las Vegas, which took place this past April. The survey asks, among other things, if the user has been to Vegas before and where they might be found in Sin City.


B2BPollvegas1.png


Here’s the most interesting part – depending on the option you choose, the poll offers a different piece of advice. I’ve never been to Vegas, so I checked “0” in the poll. Immediately, I was offered a link to a list of the top 15 things to do while visiting Las Vegas.


B2BPollVegas2.png


The options for the poll are wide-ranging and include all possibilities, it’s presented in an interesting fashion, and it redirects me directly to other places of interest. Now that’s a successful poll.


Polls Make You Interact


If you have a poll that makes your users pause, think and react, you’ve got an engaging poll and your users are actively participating. Encourage further interaction and viral growth by implementing Facebook and Twitter sharing so they can easily ask their friends to weigh in too.


 


 


 

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