Poll Web site visitors to see what they want

If you run a Web site, most likely it’s for personal or business use. Personal Web sites typically feature family photos and videos, vacation events, personal blogs and other such items. Business Web sites are usually far more complex, offering a wide variety of services such as displaying items for sale, online payment options, billing and more.

But whether your Web site is for personal or business use, chances are that getting some kind of interactive feedback from the people who visit is going to be of value. So how do you get that kind of visitor response? One of the best ways is to set up an online poll.

PollDaddy is a free online service that lets you create, set up and actively monitor your Web site’s poll with virtually no programming experience. In fact, PollDaddy offers the ability to create both polls and surveys, giving you the ultimate in user feedback control. However, I’m going to write about setting up a poll as that’s exactly what I did for my Web site, which is the home of my nationally syndicated radio talk show, Computer America.

It turns out that in the upcoming months, I am planning to initiate a series of special topic segments on the show. But my producers weren’t exactly sure about which subjects were to be of the most interest to listeners. A poll on the home page proved to be the ideal way to garner that information.

If set up correctly, visitors to your Web site will be inclined to venture a few extra clicks on a simple poll. A poll requires little effort on their part. Yet it gives your Web site’s visitors a feeling of empowerment as their opinion might influence the direction of whatever it is you are asking of them.

The only part of PollDaddy that you may find a bit challenging is the initial setup. PollDaddy gives you a small paragraph of HTML code that must be copied somewhere onto your Web site. That code will not only let you display your poll, the poll box will appear exactly where you choose to place the code text. This is the only part of the setup where you may want to ask your webmaster to give you some assistance it its placement.

Once that’s done, you can do the entire poll yourself. PollDaddy lets you create the questions to be asked, offer up the choices to be made and even gives you control on how the poll itself is to be taken.

Using a very simple and visual display, the PollDaddy Web site lets you add, edit and delete your poll’s questions and choices. You can elect to use radio buttons that let pollsters choose only one item, or check boxes that let you select as many as you wish. Other choices include setting up the poll question and adding as many choices as you like. Options let you add and subtract the choices, show the results to all or hide them only for yourself, and block repeat voters so you know that every vote is from a unique person and not just some impassioned person making the same choices over and over again. You can choose an option that lets you control who does and who does not see the ongoing results of your poll. There’s even a language option that lets you post your poll to a wider variety of people.

To see the ongoing results of your poll, you need just log onto the PollDaddy Web site, enter your name and password and you will instantly see a wide variety of ongoing poll tabulations waiting there for you to see immediately. Everything from a pie chart breakdown to an individual bar measurement accounting to show who wants more and who wants less. You can even select from a growing number of PollDaddy poll boxes. Plus, you can design one of your own if you are so inclined. Just click on the image of your liking, click Save and Continue and you have your new Web site poll.

Setting up my new Web site poll took me all of about an hour, and now that I’ve done it once, I know that setting up any further polls will take a fraction of the time. If you ever want to take a poll to get some insightful feedback from any of the visitors you may have to your online landing, you won’t have to take a poll to know that PollDaddy is a really good place to begin.

www.polldaddy.com

XCraig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. For more information, visit his Web site at www.computeramerica.com.

2009 McClatchy Tribune