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June 4, 2014

Polar – Quick Audience Insights

ss-polar
Unless you’re a psychic, there’s very little chance that you know what’s going on inside the minds of your online visitors. Rather than guessing what the readers of your website would like to see, and what opinions they may have about pop culture topics, Polar offers a quick way to find out for sure. The web-based platform enables publishers to create polls and poll sets—which are collections of related polls—to increase engagement on their websites and apps.

Polar moves beyond the fill-in forms and check boxes you’re used to see when you create online polls, providing you with a way to create visual polls that are accessible through both mobile and desktop devices. Upload images from your desktop or search for Creative Commons images to use in your polls. In most cases, your polls will be asking visitors to choose which of two images they prefer, or which image they agree with. (For example, do they prefer down coats or sport jackets?) Once your polls have been created, you can add them to your website and arrange them in whichever order you prefer. Polar provides you with the embed code to add to your site or mobile app.

As soon as your polls have gone live, you’ll be able to start tracking the results. Real-time voting activity shows you how many people have seen a poll and how many votes it has received. To generate even more responses, publishers can enable Polar’s social media tools for sharing polls on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Practical Uses:

  • Collect opinions from your online visitors
  • Give readers another way to engage with your website
  • Find out what readers would like to see covered more on your blog
  • Quiz your visitors to see what they know about pop culture

Insider Tips:

  • Use bracket supports to give visitors an endless number of voting options
  • Customize the font, color, background, or vote icons on your polls
  • Visitors can share polls through social media links
  • Create polls that support multiple-choice options

What we liked:

  • Polar polls help increase website engagement
  • Polls can be added to both websites and mobile apps
  • Polar lets publishers know how many people have seen their polls, and how many of those viewers actually took the time to vote

What we didn’t like:

  • Users can’t customize the image sizes on their polls, or remove the Polar logo

Alternatives:

Company Info:

  • Launched: 2012
  • Privately Held
  • Founded by: Luke Wroblewski and Jeff Cole
  • Web site: http://polarb.com

Costs:

  • Free

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