iQpoll is a product of CivicScience. It is an online poll application to assist website owners in finding out more about their base audience, thereby targeting advertising and increasing profit.

Visit www.iqpoll.com

iQpoll was founded in 2008 by CEO and President of CivicScience, John Dick.

iQpoll is a customizable poll that can be embedded into any website. The goal is to build a database of insights of users so that marketing can be more targeted to a business’s audience.

The basics: There are three basic elements to the application: Questions, Results, and Outro. Each question is customized and contains a title, shell, and body. The question is structured the same. There is the question, the choices for answers, and the vote button. Once answered, the user will either be provided with another question, or if there are no more questions, they will be directed back to the first results slide.

The results section slides reveal the percentage of participants who indicated each answer to each question.

The Outro section is presented after the review section. It is customizable and thanks the person for participating in the poll. Sometimes it has a link to somewhere else in the site (newsletter signup or home page).

Create an account: First, users must confirm their name, email address, change password if desired, and name the account. Next, add any company members who will be using the account and set their permission levels. Indicate whether they can review questions, results, or add to feeds.

After setting up the dashboard, it’s time to choose questions. There is an enormous database to choose from. Default shows all questions, but may be filtered by brands, business, entertainments, politics, technology, and more. To see a question with its answers, click Details. There is also a search box to help you find what you are looking for. If the question you want to ask is not listed, you may create a new one. Enter the question text and answers to the new question.

Next, users set up a target to deliver the question. By clicking the target button, you are given the option to name the target and choose either iQpoll for websites or for Facebook. A widget is created and the user must copy and paste the html code into the page where the poll is to appear. The widget did not work on a wordpress.com blog, as several don’t, and during testing the Facebook target could not be created at all. The app kept coming up with Facebook ID not recognized.

Had the review been able to continue, feeds would have been added to provide a bank of questions for the target audience. Unfortunately, neither the Wordpress blog nor Facebook would complete the process.

Based on the degree of difficulty in setting up a custom poll question and then not being able to post it to a blog or Facebook, this application is very frustrating. Use caution before spending too much time and effort into figuring it out, as it may not work anyway.

To register, users provide first and last name, email address, and password. A confirmation link is sent in an email to the address provided. The email is sent instantly and the link leads to sign in.

At the moment iQpolls is free to use, but once the bugs are worked out, there may be some fees associated with the program.

With the Facebook integration not working, incompatability with WordPress.com, and the complexity of setting up the polls, right now this application is not recommended.

• Free to use
• Somewhat complicated to understand
• Set up is not intuitive or user-friendly
• Not very accessible to those without some computer background
• Incompatible with WordPress and possibly other blogs/sites
• Facebook integration not working

Visit www.iqpoll.com