Easy Market Research with 12 Great Poll Sites

When starting a new business or updating your Marketing Plan, you may not have all the information at hand that you need. When you are defining and categorising your ideal target market, you may need to conduct some further research. There are many different methods for carrying out market research, but a very effective one is to do a poll or survey.

What is a Poll?

According to Wikipedia:

An opinion poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals.

So basically, a poll is asking a question, and then listing some possible answers for the particular sample of people you are offering the poll to.  The latest trend in polls, is to host them online, on your website or blog.  You can even send out email polls.

Benefits of Using a Poll

As I mentioned above, conducting a poll is a great way to research your market.  The best way to find out what your customers want, is to ask them.  Using polls can help you discover:

• New and Innovative Ideas – Feedback from customers can help you improve your products or services.  And find what other needs they might have, so that you could launch a product to meet those needs.
• Ways to Improve Customer Retention – Ideal customers are the ones who keep coming back, and getting feedback on the relationship you have with your customers, can make sure you keep doing the right things.  And help you improve in the areas where you need to.
• Your Target Market – Using polls can really help you break down the market demographics, and establish how they feel about your type of product of service.  Tapping into your potential customers psychodynamics can give you real insight into how you present your products or services.

Poll Question Types

The type of question you ask in a poll, depends on what you’re trying to discover, and what the goals of your survey are.  The two main types are the multiple choice poll, and the rating scale poll.  When it comes to surveys, you can also ask open-ended questions.  But for the purpose of a poll, to discover the most popular response, the open-ended questions are not necessary.

Twelve Poll Websites for your Market Research

Here you will find the following poll websites that may help you conduct your research:

1. Qualtrics

With Qualtrics Research Suite survey software, it’s a breeze to capture, analyze, and act on insights. Our popular online survey collaboration features make it easy for you to build and share a survey with peers inside or outside your organization. You are in control. Point and click your way to high caliber, branded online surveys that will impress you, your boss, and your audience.

2.Poll Daddy

Create stunning surveys, polls, and quizzes in minutes. Collect responses via your website, e-mail, iPad, Facebook, and Twitter. They have 3 service options – free, $200 per year, and $899 per year depending on your polling requirements.

3. Add Poll

Add Poll has a free online polling service.  They also offers plans up to $39.95/month.  All you need to do, its to customize your poll and paste the html code in your website, Blog, Forum and anything that supports HTML tags.

4. Typeform

Build beautiful, engaging, and conversational online forms, surveys, quizzes, landing pages, and much more with Typeform. Try it FREE & without signing up.

5. Website Toolbox Polls

Website Toolbox Polls offers a service where you can easily integrate polls into your website.  No technical know-how is required, and they offer phone, chat, and email support.  You need to become a member to use their service, and pricing starts from $15 for 3 months.

6. Mister Poll

Mister Poll allows you to create your own free polls, on any subject, with an unlimited number of questions.  You can email them to contacts, add them to your website, submit them to the public directory, and every poll gets its own message forum.

7. Survey Monkey

Survey Monkey provides a variety of professional polls and surveys.  You can choose from over 15 question types that are already configured & ready to go – Multiple Choice, Matrix of Choices, Rating Scale, Text Boxes, and Demographics.  They offer a free plan, and a range of paid plans.

8. Free Online Surveys

This survey site allows you to create free polls and surveys for your website and/ or email.  There is no software to install, and it looks simple to use.

9. Survey Galaxy

The WYSIWYG survey building tool will guide you through all the steps needed to create online surveys that will impress your customers and colleagues. You can include static text, images, radio buttons, checkboxes, data entry fields, validations, branches and language translations. You can also choose from a preset design or customize it with your own fonts and colours.  You can try their service for free for 2 weeks, then you need to choose from $9, $18, or $80 per month.

10. Survey PopUps

Survey Pop Ups offers free online polls and surveys.  You can track your visitors opinions, gauge trend popularity and find out what your website visitors are thinking.  It will work on any website or blog, and the results are instant.

11. Zoho Surveys

Create online surveys with ease. Create your survey in minutes. Reach your audience on every device. View results graphically and in real-time.

12. E-Surveys

Esurveys offers survey and poll management software with a huge amount of features that looks easy to use.  There are a variety of account options including free and paid accounts, from $12 to $24 per month.  They have a range of templates that can be used as well.

Happy Polling!  Feel free to share your thoughts and comments below, or any other sites you recommend.