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Free Polls Review introducion

The first thing anyone should think about when having their own website is they need to have some sort of "stickiness." Some people call it the "gooey" factor. So what is this sticky and gooeyness? It is what is sounds like; a way to make people stick around.

One of the best ways to make people stick around is to have a poll. Having a poll is an easy and fun way to get people started clicking on your website. Someone sees an interesting question and is impelled to vote and see what the results are.

Obviously you want a free poll that is easy to use and easy to insert into your website. Something with alot of steps and too many directions is not good for most people (unless you are well versed with code). So we are reviewing sites that offer free polls with little hassle and ease of use.

Remember this; just about every "free poll" offered for you to add to your website is going to have a link on the bottom of this to represent the company or website that is offering this poll service for you. What you want to do is make sure that this link back is not too intrusive, distracting, or ugly. Why? Because someone may avoid clicking on your poll (voting) and more importantly, if they do click on the link or advertisement on the bottom of your poll they will end up leaving your site. And of course with the way things go with browsing the Internet, you always have the possibility that your visitor may never come back.

Another key element to be paying attention to is: do the voting poll results take the visitor to another website, does a pop-up window appear for the results, or do the results appear in the same box as the voting poll box? This is something you want to pay attention to because it's safe to say, you want people to stay on your site and not risk them going elsewhere (if the poll results takes your visitor to another site).

So in conclusion; you want an easy to use poll and you want someone simple with not too much distraction on the bottom of it as well as trying to get a poll that's results remain on your site (preferably the same page).

Take a look at our snap shot images of four polls we tried below.

The last one (number 4) was the winner with it's lack of distratcion and intrusiveness on the bottom as well as having results stay in the poll box.

This was kind of like the Goldilocks story. One (1) was too ugly, the other (2) was too big, one was ok (3) but took us back to their website for voting results, and the other (4) was just right.

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Review of websites that offer "Free Polls"

Name

Rating (1-5)

Review

EasyPolls.net

4.5

This one was very easy to use, allows me to re-edit my polls, not too big or ugly. Just right. The great thing about this site's free poll is that the results stay in your voting box. There is a link to the free poll site but it is not obtrusive, ugly, or too distracting. This is a great pick.

Zoomerang

Very nice looking but the free poll is only allowed 100 votes per poll. Otherwise it is $199 a year for unlimited polls and votes.

ModPoll

Easy to use and looked very cool. Voting results did not take you away from the site. They remained in the voting box. But for the "free poll" you are only allowed 100 votes for each poll you take. This poll also seemed to make our site download on the browser slower.

PollDaddy

Like MadPoll it was easy to use and looked great but only allowed 100 votes per poll which might be ok if you have a small group of people you are expecting. But if you are trying to get a large crowd, no good.

StatPac

Seemed very easy and cool to use until we saw that they gave another 3 directions on files to download (the results page) and then another file to help you delete another file. We got it all to work fine but if you are new to writing code or doing anything with the "back end" of websites, this might be a bit difficult for you. If you have experience with building sites, this is very cool in that when you are taken to another page for the results of your voting, it's ok because it's YOUR OWN page on your site.

MicroPoll

2.5

Very nice looking and easy to use but they have two links on the bottom of their poll instead of one like others making this too distracting to us.

Survey Monkey

2.5

The site starts out easy to navigate and then we find we are being encouraged to start a survey. Site needs to be easier. Good looking polls but they only allow you 100 per poll unless you pay.

PollCode

2.5

Looks very cool and easy to use but it takes you back to their own site for the results.

ProProfs

2.5

You have to sign up first to use it but the design looks good. It starts off pretty big and you can tweak the size if you know how. The problem with this is that you HAVE to add "tags" to your poll which comes up in the voting box on the bottom and ends up being one of three links taking you back to their website.

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FreePollKit.com

2.5

Very easy to use and looks nice but it takes you completely away from your website with absolutely no "back" button or anything back to your site. Great way to loose people.

MyPollCreator

2.5

Extremely easy to use site and very simple. The only draw back is that the voting results take you to another site with no way back.

AddPoll

2.5

Very easy to use site and decent looking poll but the voting results take you to another site with no way back.

Survey Popups

Not much to say here except that they don't tell you (most sites show you a sample of a free poll) you are going to have advertising on top of your results page and advertising here, and there.

SnapPoll.com

Seemed to work on the site ok. Their site was easy to design the poll but when it went to my site, some of their link on the bottom of the poll didn't work which made me not want to use it. Weird.

BPath.com

All I have to say is, like Website Goodies website, I like many of this site's resources but having an ugly "Play Casino" image advertisement on the bottom is a bit too much as well as the fact that there are two other links on the voting button to take people somewhere else.

FreePolls.com

n/a

Haven't tried it yet

WebsiteGoodies.com

n/a

Unfortunately things didn't work out here. We have always loved the resources from this site but the code just didn't work. Can't say it was us. We tried eleven times and every other site's code worked.

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