As many of you know having content that creates interaction with visitors is a great way to go. You have probably read in many places that polls are one of the ways to do this. Polls are fairly easy to set up, users get to interact, and it can give additional value to your site. Are polls really that great for your site though? Looking at this sites analytics, polls are bad news.
A Little Google Analytics
Looking at this sites analytics I was initially looking to see how well a post does compared to my regularly posted material. Monday through Thursday I post my regular “Today’s Read”, and on Wednesday I start a new poll. Do visitors like the regular stuff more than the unique articles? I was about to find out.
Using Google Analytics I went to my Content Overview page, listed under Content. I then used the advanced segments found in the top right to compare new visitors with returning. I did this because I wanted to see how visitors reacted, and I wanted to see if the posts had similar reactions between the two groups.
First writing down how my posts did in general I tracked the average time on site, and their average bounce rate. To get that information, you will need to make sure you first scroll down to the bottom of your analytics page, and click the link to get the “view full report”.
After writing down the results I then scrolled down to the bottom of the analytics page again, and using the form to filter content I pulled up all the data for my Today’s Read posts. I repeated this for Polls, and did my comparisons.
The Results
What I found is more supporting data that says my readers like the Today’s Read Posts. They exceeded the average time on site comparing to other content, and they also have a lower bounce. Even better, the results were both very positive for new and returning visitors. I would be silly to discontinue this.
Looking at my poll pages though, the results were dismal for new and returning visitors. In fact, for new visitors, my polls were about as effective as having a sign that says GO AWAY. Even my regular readers are not sticking around for the polls, and I think they are good polls. Returning visitors were averaging 1.45 page views when first visiting a poll post. Some polls do get more votes than others, clearly a case that not all polls are created equal, but even the best polls had horrible statistics.
Another Statistic for Polls
So before deciding to eliminate polls from this site, I decided to check one more stat. How many votes have I had on all of my polls versus total unique visitors since the day I started doing them. The end result? Only 2% of my unique visitors vote on the polls. Valuable content for my readers? I think not.
How effective are your polls? Are you getting more than 5% of your users voting?
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[...] I always thought anyhow. I never even bothered to see how they were doing until the 24th of August. Here is why I killed off my polls on this site. Basically, they stunk. It’s still to early to tell how this is working, but I don’t [...]