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| Issue 3 Home | Editorial | Features | Regular Columns | News & Events | Misc. | ||
January 2001
As the Web gets deeper and wider it becomes more and more important for us to get feedback from our users. Cultivate Interactive investigates one of the ways you can.
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Can you think of any good ways to get user feedback? Most sites contain the obligatory 'Contact us' link, some have 'User feedback forms' but a number have taken the plunge and added polling software to their site allowing visitors to vote on whether they like the site or not. You may think that online polls are tacky and unnecessary but they are a very quick and easy way to find out what your users think.
A variety of externally-hosted polling services are available. Bear in mind that some of these make their money through advertising. A selection of the best are given below.
The free trial version of the SurveySolutions Express interface is downloadable from their site. The interface is fairly intuitive and easy to use. The available polling solutions are divided up into single-question polls and multiple surveys and users can schedule these in advance and switch over to a different poll whenever they want. Changing the design and content of your poll is easy to do even after saving it. SurveySolutions for the Web, Including the CD and documentation is currently priced at $179.00.
URL: <http://www.perseus.com/softwareprod/ssexpress_index.html>
You have to register initially to be given access to the EZPolls manager page but once you are in you can configure your poll to your hearts content! The online version is easy to use and you are free to create as many polls as you like. The configurable options include the color scheme, up to 15 answer choices, voting preferences and the option to have your results emailed to you on a regular basis.The free version of Ezpolls, EZpolls Lite, is funded by advertising, a licensed version is also available at $199/ per poll. An example of this service is given below. Mycomputer.com, who make EZPolls have a number of other useful and sometimes free services including site submitters, advertising exchanges and banner adds.
IBID claims to be "The best market research, opinion poll and survey tool online". It offers both single question surveys and multiple question surveys. You can choose between public, registered and registered-restricted. Registered user surveys can be used to target specific countries, age ranges etc. Restricted surveys can be set up to allow only invited customers to complete them by means of a predefined key. IBID also offers translation services on surveys. Currently you can have your survey in English, Finnish, Polish and Russian. Another added advantage is that you can get extra traffic to your site from other visitors to IBID pages who can also see and respond to your surveys .
URL: <http://www.ibid.co.uk/>
The OnlineOpinion system is different from a standard opinion poll, it is more a user feedback solution. The code is download from the Web site free of charge and copied and pasted into your site. An OnlineOpinion icon will appear on each page of your site and begin collecting valuable user feedback. You can view your free O-Scan data in the O-Zone or subscribe to reports, which cost money. The product can be complicated to set up but provides very useful information.
URL: <http://www.o-pinion.com/>
Vox Populi - URL: <http://tools.arsdigita.com/voxpopuli/>
Zaplet - URL: <http://zaplet.zaplet.com/index.jsp>
CGI World - URL: <http://www.cgi-world.com/pollit.html>
Infopoll - URL: <http://www.infopoll.com/>
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For citation purposes:
Cultivate Interactive "Providing User Feedback services through Polling Software", Cultivate Interactive, issue
3, 29 January 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue3/polls/>
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