7 ways to get the most from your Website poll

A Website poll can be a fantastic way to get visitors to interact with your Website whilst providing you with valuable user opinion in the process.

Here are 7 ways to ensure you don’t waste any of your valuable online real estate in the process.

Your Website poll should:

• Not interrupt the user.
  Don’t interrupt the user’s experience with a pop up which you shove in their faces. Encourage them to discover the poll by all means but allow them to choose to participate. Guess how accurate the answers will be anyway if the user doesn’t want to take part…
  
  
• Have a purpose.
  You want information which you can use to help you in some way such as sell more of a product, get more people interested in a service you offer or test the market with a new offering you are considering. Why distract your users if the information you acquire won’t be of practical benefit to you?
  
  
• Be easy for users to answer.
  People’s time is precious. Making them have to think about a complicated answer is more likely to result in them not bothering to take part as they rush to read your content or, worse yet, explore another site.
  
  
• Be unambiguous.
  Make sure the question can be answered without users wanting to select more than one option or wanting to answer, 'that depends…’.
  
  
• Not have too many options.
  Too many options will make what should be a relatively quick and simple interaction into something too tedious and irritating for people to care about. Imagine being asked to please choose your favourite holiday location from the following 500 options…
  
  
• Be interesting.
  If the question or topic, or both, are not interesting then why would anyone bother to answer it? Remember that you are getting the users valuable opinion (and even more valuable time) in exchange for their curiosity as to the other results or their desire to have a say in the matter. Both reasons involve them being interested in the first place.
  
  
• Be of practical benefit to you via the results.
  Don’t collect data from lots of your visitors only to discover that from the results you can’t determine what they actually want. If you asked; What colour do you prefer: green, blue or other? and 50 people answer ‘other’, you are no further forward in understanding what their favourite colour is.

An example Website poll can be seen on the right-hand side of the pages of the main Website.

Question: In the last six months, how often have you added new content to your website?

Results: You can view the simple stats by clicking 'results' on the poll or you can visit the detailed results here: http://www.quanticdesigns.co.uk/poll_report/index.cfm

If you would like Quantic to set up a Website poll and results on your Website then please get in touch.

The Top 7 Benefits of a Google Maps Listing

Have you created a Google Maps listing for your business yet? If not you are missing out on a potentially amazing listing opportunity.

Here are the top benefits:

1. Exposure in Google
   Google displays results at the top of page 1 based on Google Maps Listings if someone searches for a combination of a service and place. For instance, look at this example where we searched for ‘airport parking Edinburgh’; http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=airport+parking+Edinburgh&meta=. Secure Air Parks’ (a client) listing is displayed above the top ranking natural listing and with a map and details all displayed – without any competition from other car parks.
   
   
2. Maps Results Dominate
   The maps listings returned in the results are arguably more predominant on the page than the paid Adwords are. Without even spending money you can be acquiring the traffic your competitors are paying to be exposed to.
   
   
3. It Costs Nothing
   You will have to register your business, and do an address verification, which is posted out to you, and create your map entry. All it will cost is your time, or ours.
   
   
4. Secure Top Position
   If you get a listing added before your competitors for your service and location then you will always appear before them as entries are listed in the order they were added. (True at the time of writing.)
   
   
5. Multilple Offices Supported
   You can list multiple business locations from within a single account. Perfect if you have more than one office.
   
   
6. Directions Made Easy
   An accurate road map with directions ensures that your prospective clients can find you easily. They can even toggle between map and satellite view.
   
   
7. Expanding Services
   Google have announced improvements to the service we can expect in the future such as integration with mobiles, map links within results listings and the creation of coupons/vouchers that users can print off and bring with them.

It is also very likely that other local directories will feed off of the Google Maps Entries as it is the same system used to list businesses and so your business listing will start appearing elsewhere as a pleasant consequence.

If you want to create your Google Maps listing it can be done in a few easy steps:

1. Sign in to the Google Local Business Center. You will need to use an existing Google account or create a new one.
2. Supply your business information and select up to 5 categories that best describe your business.
3. Preview and verify your listing. To confirm your business location, Google sends you a postcard with a confirmation code. You will need to follow the instructions provided in the postcard and your listing will be live within 6 weeks.
   

Don’t procrastinate. The free, enhanced listing exposure can do wonders for your business and even if you are not desperate for traffic just yet it is worth securing your position in the maps results listing before your competitors do.