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We are excited to add a new feature that lets our blog readers cast a vote on a range of web-related activities and topics. By casting a vote, the reader can see the result of the poll. Our first polling question concerns web marketing. Specifically, it asks: What outlet do you use the most for promoting your website? There are five main choices the reader can choose from:

• Direct advertising on search engines
• Advertising on non-search engine websites
• Email marketing
• Offline advertising
• None or unknown

Obviously, we want the reader to choose the option that best fits their marketing agenda. Once the vote is casted, the reader is automatically taken to the polling results page which we believe elegantly shows the following:

• A green box (figure 1) appears to confirm saving of your vote and thanks you for your participation.
• If you vote again on the same question, your voting option will likely be updated accordingly instead of being saved as new. Our system allows more than one vote; however, votes subsequent to the first replace the old choice. So voting more than once changes your last response. In essence, our system is designed to count only one vote per visitor. We don't use cookies to track your voting activities.
• Details of the polling question (figure 2). As the figure 2 shows, the first piece of information that is displayed are some dates. The first date represents the date when the poll started and the second date indicates when the poll ended (or ends). The next line shows the polling question, which is obviously shown in larger fonts to make it stand out in the context. We next show the voting results numerically and graphically. To make the results more visually appealing, we use a coloring scheme to fill the default 100% orange color with some percentage of black to match the percentage of votes casted for a particular option. Finally, the last line indicates whether or not the poll is closed or open and the total votes casted.

Figure 1 shows a reader’s vote is saved

Figure 2 polling summary

Hopefully, you will find this information helpful to understand the steps involved in our polling and in understanding the results shown. Of course, you should not rely solely on our polling (or any other polling for that matter) to make your business decisions regards to your website. Why? Because the polling just represents a measure of what people have said, not what they actually did or will do. Instead, we suggest you talk with your web agency professionals to discuss your website project needs, and if needed, the general findings of our polling.