What is an online poll?

An online poll is an ad-hoc or unofficial voting system in which participants vote on choices created by the poll maker. Typically this is done by selecting the choice of a poll question and applying their vote by clicking a vote button. Online polls may allow anyone to participate. The use of online polls has become increasingly popular due to blog writers, social media influencers, and many others to create and share polls that can be answered by simply selecting a checkbox.

Online polls, and the authenticity of results

Online polls are used to get a general idea of which individual option is the most popular. This is an ad-hoc solution because we cannot guarantee the legitimacy of each vote. Most votes are normally cast using an individual's IP address. IP addresses are unique to a specific users internet service provider. This also means that if a user knows how to modify their unique ip address they would be able to cast multiple votes. This is one of the flaws in online voting. To alleviate this issue, Polltab allows additional security options that can help drastically reduce duplicate votes using our various types of authenticated based voting. You can read more about authenticated based voting in our article Polltab voting security features.

Online polls are fun!

Online polls are about having fun and getting a general idea of what the favored result might be based on your sample size of voters. Online polls are not meant to serve as factual truth, and should not be used as such.

Why should I create an online poll?

Below are some examples on when you might use an online poll.
  • Blog writers
    • If you write blogs and like to collect feedback from your readers about the quality of your content or a general opinion of your readers, you can create a poll and provide the link to the poll on your blog. This allows you to collect feedback and create even more engaging content for your readers.
  • Social media
    • If you run a social media channel like youtube or instagram, and would like to collect feedback. Similar to the blog example above you can engage your subscribers/fans by creating a poll to help decide your next video, or general feedback on your current videos. You can be as creative as you want with the type of polls you can make!
  • Live Presentation
    • You might use an online poll during your presentation to an audience. You can share the unique voting link with your audience, and open up the results page and watch the votes come in live!
  • Friends and Family
    • Having a hard time deciding what to eat? What movies to watch? Or even what to wear? You can easily create a poll and share it with your friends and family to help you decide on your choices. Polltab also supports images, and videos as choice options making it really easy for you to create an engaging poll.
There are many more use cases not covered above, hopefully this gives you a general sense of what you can do with an online poll. If you have any questions please contact us!