Ranker has a new program where we offer a polling widget to partner sites who want the engagement of a poll in list format (as opposed to the standard radio button poll). Currently, sites that use our poll (e.g. TheNextWeb or CBC) are seeing 20-50% of visitors engaging in the poll and an increase in returning visitors who want to keep track of results. We also give partners prominent placement on Ranker.com (details of that here), but a benefit that is less obvious is the potential insights from one’s users that one can gain from the data behind a poll. To illustrate what is possible, I’m going to use data from one of our regular widget users, Phish.net, who posted this poll on Phish’s best summer concert jams.
One piece of data that Ranker can give partners is a regional breakdown of voters. Unsuprisingly, there were strong regional differences in voting behavior with voters from the northeast often choosing a jam from their New Jersey show, voters from the west coast often choosing a jam from their Hollywood Bowl show, voters from the south often choosing a jam from their Maryland show, voters from the midwest often choosing a jam from their Chicago show, and voters from the mountain region often choosing a jam from their show at The Gorge. However, the interesting thing to me was that the leading jam in every region was Tweezer – Lake Tahoe from July 31st. As someone who believes that better crowdsourced answers are produced by aggregating across bias and who has only been to 1 Phish concert, I’m definitely going to have to check out this jam. Perhaps the answer is obvious to more experienced Phish fans, but the results of the poll are certainly instructive to the more casual music fan who wants a taste of Phish.
Below are the results of the poll in graphical format. Notice how the shows cluster based on venue and geography except for Tweezer – Lake Tahoe which is directly in the center of the graph.
If you’re interested in running a widget poll on your site, the benefits are more clearly spelled out here and you can email us at “widget at ranker.com”. We’d love to provide similar region based insights for your polls as well.