When it comes to gathering on-time feedback from an audience, running a poll is often the first choice for researchers. Polls are easy to administer, and allow you to gather large volumes of data seamlessly,
Despite this, creating and deploying polls from scratch can be a chore. This is why smart researchers turn to WordPress plugins to automate this process. So how does this work? Use this guide to learn more about different WordPress polling plugins, their features, and pricing.
Different Types of Websites Polls and Their Uses
1. Opinion Polls
An opinion poll is a simple method of finding out what people think about a subject matter. It involves asking a series of closed-ended questions to a small group of people representing a larger population to gather information about their views or beliefs.
Opinion polls are primarily used in policy-making, socio-economic and socio-political contexts. For example, after enacting a new policy, the government can conduct in-person and online polls to gather feedback.
After collecting poll responses, the researchers extrapolate the results to the larger population.
Importance of Opinion Polls
- Opinion polls help you to gather real-time feedback from the sample population.
- It’s an effective method of collecting diverse perceptions in any systematic investigation.
Explore: Free Opinion Poll Template
2. Marketing Research Surveys
A market research survey is a data collection tool that organizations use to gather relevant information about the target audience’s needs. It is an essential step in creating a new product or improving an existing one.
Market surveys help you collect large volumes of data from a large population simultaneously while saving time and cost.
Importance of Market Research Surveys
- Market surveys help you gather important customer feedback.
- It allows organizations to understand customers’ purchasing inclinations.
- It enables you to improve existing products.
3. Personality Tests
A personality test is a set of questions that help you understand an individual’s behaviors, characteristics, and overall preferences. It is an essential part of psychometric assessments, especially during the hiring or students’ evaluation.
The results of a personality test help you to predict an individual’s behavior and reaction in different contexts. For example, in recruitment, a personality test enables you to make a well-thought-out decision of whether a candidate fits into your organization’s culture.
Explore: How to Create Personality Quizzes using Forms (+ 20 Examples for Quiz Builders)
Importance of Personality Tests
- It provides insight into an individual’s actions, ideology and behaviors.
- It helps you decide on the best way to interact with different individuals.
4. Exit Polling
As the name suggests, an exit poll happens at the end of a particular activity, such as an election, job tenure, or even a volunteering exercise. The idea here is to gather helpful feedback on participants’ perceptions about the activity or occurrence.
For example, many companies request outgoing employees to complete exit polls to share relevant bits and pieces about their experiences. Many exit polls use open-ended questions that encourage participants to share deep-level information.
Read: Online Voting: Guide to Creating Online Poll in 7 Simple Steps
Importance of Exit Polls
- Exit polls provide a detailed overview of an individual’s unique experiences related to the research context.
- It gives relevant feedback that helps you create better experiences for participants in the future.
5. Live Tracking Polls
A live tracking poll is a method of reporting real-time data from the field as they come in. This data collection method is most common in elections where each party’s votes are presented as soon as available.
We can draw a live tracking polling example from the U.S 2020 General Elections. As you might have noticed, the election’s live results were announced in real-time. This type of polling is commonly used for building anticipation in the minds of your audience.
Importance of Live Tracking Polls
- They help you to gather real-time feedback from the audience.
- Live tracking polls are one of the most transparent data collection methods.
6. Benchmarking Polls
A benchmark poll is somewhat like a baseline survey. Its purpose is to establish a reference point that shows the state of things at a particular time—before any changes happen. For example, politicians can conduct a benchmark survey before they kick off their campaign or declare interest in contesting in an election.
Use For Free: Simple Online Poll Maker
Importance of Benchmark Polls
- It establishes a benchmark or baseline in a systematic investigation.
- Results from benchmark polls can help you make better decisions on the most practical steps in research.
7. Predictive Polls
Predictive polls are often used in political forecasting. Researchers depend on the results of these polls to predict changes in the political landscape, especially during elections.
8. Brushfire Polls
Like benchmark polls, a brushfire poll is used by political campaigns to gauge the public’s interest in a candidate and their manifesto. Brushfire polls are polls taken during the period between the benchmark poll and tracking polls.
On Offer: Free Political Poll Template
Importance of Brushfire Polls
- It helps a political candidate to know how much progress they’ve made with their campaign.
- Campaign teams use brushfire polls to test possible attack messages that their opponent may use and potential responses to those attacks.
How Plugins Simplify the Task of Creating Polls on WordPress
- WordPress plugins save time and resources. Plugins help you to automate the poll creation process and save a lot of development time.
- Plugins have numerous options and extended functionalities that help you create custom polls with unique fonts, colors, and other features.
- WordPress plugins are very reliable.
- It is easy to add plugins to your WordPress websites.
What to Look Out for in a WordPress Poll Plugin?
Before choosing a WordPress poll plugin, there are several features you should look out for. Let’s do a deep dive into some of the features of a good poll plugin.
- Non-interference with UX or Site Speed
The first thing to look out for is how the plugin affects your site’s load-time. Site speed is one of the most important ranking factors for websites—slow site speed can increase the bounce rates on your site and slow down traffic.
So, before you install any plugins, you should be sure that it wouldn’t tank your website’s speed significantly. At the same time, it should improve the overall user experience on your site.
- Display Poll Results with Graphs and Charts
While some plugins only allow you to gather responses from participants, others go the extra mile, enabling you to display results using graphs, charts, and other statistical methods.
A plugin that supports the latter is a better choice because it makes it easier to organize and report the data gathered.
- Polls should be Easily-added Anywhere
One of the most critical features of any WordPress plugin is flexibility. This means it should support add-ons to posts, pages, pop-ups, sidebar widgets, and the like on your website.
Best WordPress Plugins for Creating User Polls
1. Crowd Signal Polls and Ratings
Crowd Signal Polls and Ratings is a simple data collection tool that allows you to create polls, surveys, and ratings in minutes. Its WordPress plugin enables researchers to develop, administer and manage polls right from their WordPress dashboard.
Key Features/What You Can Do With It
- Fully customizable polls
- Unlimited responses
- Embeddable ratings
- Unique poll domains
- Poll reports and analytics
- Export and share your data, anytime, in any format.
Pricing: Crowd Signal has a free plan and a three-tier paid plan. The premium plan costs $25 per month, the Business plan costs $59, and the Team plan costs $29 per user per month and is billed annually.
2. Poll Maker
Poll Maker is a free polling tool that allows you to create and deploy simple polls in minutes. One of the perks of using Poll Maker for data gathering is its flexible, user-friendly interface that makes the entire polling process seamless.
Features/What You Can Do With It
- Create mobile-optimized polls
- Share polls on social media platforms like Facebook directly from your WordPress dashboard.
- Embed polls and surveys to your websites.
- Create and administer fully-customizable polls
- Hide/show poll results.
- Integrate pictures and videos to improve poll participation
- Export results seamlessly
- View live poll results in clear, concise graphs
Pricing: Free
3. Formplus
Formplus is an easy-to-use data collection tool that allows you to create polls, surveys, and forms to gather relevant insights from your audience. It has a powerful drag and drop form builder where you can build your poll from scratch or edit any fully-customizable templates available on the platform.
Features of the Formplus wordpress plugin/Why You Should Use It
- Enjoy access to more than 30 form fields, including rating fields, numerical fields, and text fields.
- Create mobile-friendly polls
- Numerous form sharing options, including social media platforms, websites, and QR codes
- Google Sheets integration
- Send auto-responders and email invitations.
- Share polls via private links
- Teams and collaboration
Pricing: Formplus has a basic plan that’s free to use forever. At the same time, it has several paid plans starting at $25. The most expensive plan is the Platinum plan that costs $85.
4. TotalPoll Pro
TotalPoll Pro is a WordPress plugin that enables researchers to create and embed polls easily.
Features/What You Can Do With It
- Share polls via email
- Data analysis tool for poll results
- Add images and videos to polls
- Include multiple-choice questions in your polls
- Track polling results on the go
- Manage results
Pricing
TotalPoll Pro has a free version. It also has a paid version starting from $79.00 /year.
5. HubSpot WordPress Plugin
Hubspot WordPress plugin is a free plugin that you can use to create forms and popups for polling, build email drips and campaigns for lead nurturing and manage client information in one place. HubSpot integrates with most WordPress form builders, form creators, and popup builders out-of-the-box, so you don’t have to worry about making a switch.
Key Features/What You Can Do With It
- Drag and drop form builder
- Integrates with other form builders
- Conditional logic
- Custom form fields
- Create no-code polls
Pricing: Free
6. WordPress Survey and Poll
WordPress Survey and Poll plugin allows you to gather responses via polls and display the results using animated graphs and other data visualization tools. You can change the poll’s look and feel using the numerous customization options.
Key Features/What You Can Do With It
- Create responsive and mobile-friendly forms
- Lots of form customization options, including more than 600 Google fonts
- Works with all major browsers
- Visual form builder
- View results as animated charts
- Optional screen-lock
Price: WP Poll has a free version, while the pro tool costs $29.
7. Advanced Poll for WordPress
Advanced Poll is a WordPress plugin for managing polls effectively. You can use this tool to administer polls via posts, pages, and WordPress widgets easily. Advanced Poll has a user-friendly interface design that assists you during the poll creation process.
Key Features/What You Can Do With It
- Compatible with the latest WordPress versions
- Easy to use
- Numerous form customization options
- Multiple poll integrations
Pricing: $17
8. GetSiteControl
GetSiteControl is a WordPress plugin used for creating different types of targeted website pop-ups and forms to gather relevant insights from your audience.
Features/What You Can Do With It
- Create mobile-responsive forms
- Create multipage surveys
- In-built CSS editor for creating custom poll and form designs
- Send autoresponders to poll participants
- View poll results in performance chats
Pricing: It starts at $7, and the most expensive plan costs $21 per month.
Conclusion
WordPress plugins can make polling easier, but making an informed choice is key. So, take time to consider your unique needs, budget and the plugin’s features before making a choice.