Are you thinking about creating a poll to gather some feedback, find out your audience’s preferences, or to fulfill some other goal? Although polls may be simple by nature, the data that you collect from them can be very useful – provided you take steps to ensure they’re effective.
If you want to know some simple ways that you can make your online polls much more effective, all you need to do is:
- Keep it simple
A big part of the appeal of polls compared to surveys is the fact that they are simple, uncomplicated, and can be answered quickly. It is important that you keep that in mind when you create your poll and try to ensure that it turns out as simple as possible.
Try to avoid creating polls that have too many answer options (i.e. more than 4), as that will immediately put people off and make your poll less effective at collecting responses. Make sure your questions are short, and phrased in a simple and direct manner too.
- Steer clear of leading questions
If your poll is made up of a leading question, it will immediately impact the accuracy of the data that you collect. Any poll question should be structured to be neutral, and not bias the responses one way or the other.
For example a question like, “How much faster is our delivery service compared to others?” implies the delivery service is faster. A more neutral way to structure the question would be “How do you rate the speed of our delivery service compared to others?”
- Always balance rating scale answers
Many polls have answers that are structured as a rating scale – but for that to be effective the answers must be balanced. Every rating scale should contain an even amount of positive and negative answers.
For example if your answer options are ‘Very Good’, ‘Good’, ‘Average’, and ‘Bad’ – it isn’t balanced. On the other hand if it was ‘Very Good’, ‘Good’, ‘Average’, ‘Bad’ and ‘Very Bad’, it would be.
- Get a second opinion
One of the best ways to make sure your online polls are simple, straightforward, and easy to understand is to get a second opinion. Having a separate pair of eyes take a look at your poll can help identify any issues.
In many cases you’ll find that your poll question and answers may seem to make complete sense to you, but its meaning may not be clear at all to others.
Be sure to try out these tips the next time you use your online poll maker to come up with a poll. If possible you should pay close attention to the results and compare them to previous polls, so that you can see how much of a difference it makes.
All said and done you should end up with polls that are more effective. Not only will they help you to acquire more responses, but the data that you gather should be more reliable as well.
Author bio:
Mahendra Bajiya has extensive experience as a digital marketer and SEO specialist. HE draws on that experience regularly in order to provide services via MIGuestpost.com and cater to the marketing needs of his clients. If you want to know more visit his pages at LinkedIn – Facebook – Twitter.
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