Doing a poll on a blog post

I may want to do a poll here in the medium future, and I thought I'd try out some different methods to see what works. This first one is from this site.

If there was a poll on this blog, would you participate?

  
pollcode.com free polls 

From the same site, a different objective and layout:

What kind of bird is depicted in each of these photos?

  
pollcode.com free polls 

More like this

The world's largest baking-soda-and-vinegar volcano is now fully operational at our Intel ISEF booth. All morning and afternoon, unsuspecting finalists have fallen victim to the noxious vapors and bubbling lava spewing from the sinister cinder cone. Oh, the humanity...
In the aftermath of last night's Student Pin Exchange, out of the dizzying array of commemorative pins, buttons, and cultural trinkets that were swapped, which emerged as the most eye-catching, coveted, and sought after?
The new channel landing pages are up and running. The photos on the landing pages will rotate on a weekly basis. The Sb overlords are always on the lookout for new images to appear there and our readers are a great source for such pictures.

After leaving a comment in the poll, one get this silly screen:

Comment Posted

Did you know you can create your own poll free of charge?
Visit Pollcode.com. It's easy and fun!

[ Return to Poll | Create your own free poll! ]

By NewEnglandBob (not verified) on 23 Jan 2013 #permalink

How bad is that, though. I mean, it's free. Are there other better alternatives you know of off hand? I'll look around over the next few days.

Chad Orzel has had numerous polls on his blog in the past, using both radio button polls like the first example and some check box polls like the second, some quite serious and some even sillier than your obvious test. He uses a different provider (PollDaddy IIRC, but you'd have to check his archives to be sure). You might ask him about his experiences.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 24 Jan 2013 #permalink

I didn't like the way that the [Vote] button on the pollcode.com version (first) redirected you to their site. It makes the "View" button both redundant, and slightly misleading, since the existence of a "choice" whether to view results implies that the user can choose not to do so, which they cannot.

Both radio buttons (exclusive choices) and check boxes (multiple choices) have their place in polls. In your second example, since each of the four pairs consists of mutually exclusive choices, I would have coded it up as four pairs of radio buttons, one pair for each of the hypothetical photos.

In any event, I definitely like the idea of polls like this being embedded in the blog, rather than sending the reader off somewhere else (as Doodle and SurveyMonkey require).

By Michael Kelsey (not verified) on 24 Jan 2013 #permalink