We all need feedback to improve upon our weak areas. The same holds true for the web publishers as well. As a blogger or website owner, you probably realize that readers will rarely write emails about what they like or what they hate about your site or what topics they like to see more on your blog - It's not like they don't have feedback, it's just that they need a quick mechanism for doing this.
Composing a new email email message is just too lengthy a process. But if if you show your site visitors a short and targeted opinion poll on your blog, they are very likely to participate because it's quick, requires minium clicks and they can also choose to remain anonymous.
While MajikWidget may be the most popular web-based service for creating online polls and ranking systems for your blog, my personal favorite is Zoho Polls because of three reasons - it's free, it's very easy to embed and it's from Zoho, one of the most promising web 2.0 companies on the global map.
Zoho Polls provide a small iframe html code with variable width which can fit in any section of your website. Readers can vote or view existing results without having to leave your website. Though there's no option to modify the colors of the Zoho poll add-on, they still have a decent color theme which would match with most websites.
You can attach tags to your public polls so that visitors on the Zoho website may discover your poll. They provide an RSS feed for the comments on your polls which is another useful feature.
Here's a sample Zoho poll survey which I created to get some feedback from you about this blog. If there's anything more you like to add which cannot e conveyed in the poll window, please do say that in the comments.
Another hidden advantage of running a poll is that feed subscribers who don't visit your site as they read your blog content inside their RSS readers will be tempted to step-in just to voice their opinions.
And remember, these online polls are not just for reader feedback, you can use them with your friends and family to decide which movie to watch this weekend or where to spend the coming holidays. They are fun.
Zoho Polls | Sample Survey
