set up a WordPress poll

Finding out what your users think about your content (or what they want from your website) can be a challenge. Analytics tools can provide you with most of the metrics you need, but sometimes numbers alone aren’t enough to figure out the problem. You could, however, ask your audience directly if you set up a WordPress poll.

In this article, we’ll go into detail about:

Let’s get started!

The benefits of setting up a poll on your WordPress website 📝

An online poll poses a question to an audience, and provides them with enough options to give you a relevant response for your research. Through a poll, you get to know your audience better and create consumer profiles based on the answers that you receive. Depending on the question, you might need more than a simple “Yes” or “No”, for example:

An example of an online poll.

While a simple “Yes” or “No” might suffice in that case, adding more options can provide you with more accurate results. The same applies to all online polls in general. If you make a point of asking the questions your audience cares about (and provide them with a decent set of options), they’ll reward you with some excellent data.

Once in your hands, you can use the gathered survey results to tailor your content to your visitors’ interests. That way, you can turn a simple WordPress online poll into a long-term engagement boost.

In general terms, there are several types of polls, ranging from the simplest (‘Yes/No’) to those that pose several questions successively (i.e. surveys). For this article, we’ll be dealing only with basic multi-option online polls, and how to set them up using a WordPress poll plugin.

Three plugins to help set up a WordPress poll 🔌

Now that there are plenty of tools to help you set up a WordPress poll, we’ve had to narrow down the pool of options to the very best in the market. The three free plugins we’ve selected are particularly renowned for keeping poll creation simple, analyzing the subsequent results efficiently, and maintaining a seamless user experience while at it.

Once we’re done exploring their features, we’ll teach you how to set one of them up.

1. YOP Poll

YOP Poll lets you integrate both polls and surveys in your WordPress website. You can run multiple polls simultaneously, or schedule them in advance around each other. Each poll can be as simple or as complex as you want, and you can sort the results according to several criteria. Best of all, you can easily limit access to your polls only to registered users, to avoid dealing with false results.

Key features:

  • Supports both polls and surveys.
  • Enables you run multiple polls simultaneously and schedule them in advance.
  • Helps parse your results efficiently, thanks to advanced sorting criteria.
  • Limits access to your polls depending on user roles, IPs, and specific usernames.
Pros:

  • Offers an easy to use interface.
  • Comes with several options to go through your results.
  • Includes several poll styles out of the box.
Cons:

  • Lacks customization (aside from picking a pre-set theme).

2. Typeform

The Typeform plugin does more than simple polls and surveys – it also allows you to build mobile-ready online forms. You’re should be able to create them via a drag-and-drop builder, with the ability to embed images, videos, and GIFs to boot. There’s also a selection of Google Fonts and styles to choose from – so there should be no issues in matching your poll to your website’s design.

However, for all of the positives, there’s one negative: you’ll have to open a Typeform account in order to create your polls, embed them on your site, and manage responses.

Key features:

  • Supports polls, surveys, and online forms.
  • Offers over 900 Google Fonts to choose from.
  • Includes a number of field types.
  • Enables you to embed images, video, and GIFs.
Pros:

  • Integrates with a number of tools (such as Slack and MailChimp), via Zapier.
  • Enables you to take credit card payments through your forms.
  • The surveys look really great and have nice animated elements, hence helping the user engage with them better.
Cons:

  • You need to set up a Typeform account to embed your forms.
  • You can’t edit polls or check responses through the plugin itself.

3. WPForms

Just like Typeform, WPForms is a drag-and-drop WordPress form builder that creates not only web forms, but also online surveys and polls.

It’s worth noting, however, that you won’t be able to set up a WordPress poll right off the bat. Once you’ve installed the WPForms plugin, you still need to proceed to its Add-ons page and activate the WPForms Surveys and Polls Addon. Only then do you get to leverage WPForms as a WordPress poll plugin.

And when it comes to it, the process of creating polls is satisfyingly simple with this plugin. All you need to do is use its intuitive drag-and-drop builder to freely customize prebuilt surveys and polls templates.

So versatile is the system, in fact, that you can even set up your WordPress poll to follow conditional logic. The types of survey fields here include multiple choice, Net Promoter Score, Likert scale, dropdown options, and checkboxes.

Key features:

  • Intuitive drag and drop form builder.
  • Creates polls, surveys, and online forms.
  • Sets up personalized WordPress polls using conditional logic.
  • Creates WordPress polls by customizing prebuilt templates.
  • Supports smart poll fields such Likert scale, Net Promoter Score, star ratings, multiple choice, etc.
  • Fully responsive on desktops, mobile, and tablets.
  • Displays poll results in real-time.
  • Smart captcha to prevent spam poll submissions.
Pros:

  • You don’t need any coding skills to create polls.
  • The online polls are highly responsive across all mobile and desktop browsers.
  • Translates the online polls to different languages based on the localization settings.
  • Capable of administering polls with conditional logic.
  • Generates poll results in real time.
  • Provides customizable templates for building polls and surveys.
  • The polls can be easily embedded in your blog posts, web pages, and page sections.
  • Integrates with email marketing services.
Cons:

  • Can’t set up a WordPress poll until you’ve installed a secondary add-on for surveys and polls.
  • The free WordPress poll plugin options comes with very limited capabilities.
  • Building your polls from scratch can be pretty demanding.

How to set up a WordPress poll in 3 steps (using YOP Poll) 📊

Although we’ve introduced you to three excellent polling tools to set up a WordPress poll, we’re only going to use one of them to provide you with a live example. YOP Poll was the obvious choice for us – not because Typeform and WPForms were lacking, but on account of there being no sign-up process.

Actually, we’re huge fans of both Typeform and WPForms, as we’ve built a number of polls and surveys using their intuitive tools. For instance, our big WordPress hosting survey was done entirely on Typeform, and we couldn’t be happier with the result. You too could also try it out, especially if what you need are some really advanced, functional, and great-looking WordPress surveys.

Otherwise, here is how to set up a WordPress poll with YOP Poll:

Step #1: Install and activate YOP Poll

We’re sure you’re familiar with this process, but just in case, feel free to check out this guide to installing and activating WordPress plugins.

Set up a WordPress poll by installing the YOP Poll plugin.

When you’re done, you’ll notice a new Yop Poll item in your WordPress dashboard – and it’s here you’ll need to be for the next step.

Step #2: Set up a WordPress poll

Click on the Add New option under Yop Poll, and type a title for your poll at the top of the page:

The poll name field.

Next, click on the Question & Answers tab. Since we’re setting up a simple poll, all we need is the one question. Go ahead and type your question in the corresponding field:

The poll question field.

Now type your answers in the fields underneath.

The poll answers field.

To add more answers, click on the folder icon that shows up when you hover over each answer block. Every time you click on this icon, you create an answer duplicate, which you can edit afterward.

The poll answers field.

When you’re ready, click on Design tab at the top of the page to select the poll’s template. After selecting the template, choose from the list of the predefined styles that the plugin offers.

Set up a WordPress poll by using some poll template examples.

Choose one that fits well with your WordPress theme, and click Publish.

Step #3: Insert your WordPress poll

After configuring and choosing a style for your WordPress poll, you have two options. Firstly, you can add it to your site using a shortcode:

Set up a WordPress poll by using a poll shortcode as you see in this example.

Alternatively, navigate to Appearance > Widget in your WordPress dashboard, and pick the Yop Polls option. Drag it to your preferred location, and choose which poll to display from the widget’s drop-down list:

The widget poll options.

If you’re using the block editor, go to the location where you want to display the poll and click on the + sign. Type Yop Poll and select the poll that you want to display on your site.

Set up a WordPress poll and customize it by using the widget poll block options.

Once you click Update, you’ll see the poll displayed on your website. That’s all there is to it!

Conclusion 🏁

Connecting with your users and determining what they want from your site is not a simple process, but it can be done. We’re not recommending that you eschew analytics tools per se, just consider whether in some cases, a plain old poll can be the better option.

If you want to set up a WordPress poll of your own, these are the steps you’ll need to follow:

  1. Install and activate the YOP Poll plugin.
  2. Set up a WordPress poll using the plugin.
  3. Insert your new poll on your site.
Do you have any questions about how to set up a WordPress poll? Share them with us in the comments section below!

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