Receive fees and donations from voters

Recently we announced a feature to collect Submission fees and donations from your audience. Today we are happy to introduce a new feature that will help you monetize your PollUnit vote.
The ability to charge fees to voters allows voting poll and photo contest creators to receive a financial benefit from their work. In addition, an optional donation can also be requested. In particular, non-profit organizations that rely on donations can thus ask their voters for financial support.
You can also sell votes. That sounds strange for a voting platform that is all about fair elections and competitions? Yes, we thought so too at first. But unlike a legally secure and fair election, this is about giving an advantage to people who buy multiple votes. Huh? Now that's even unfair and undermines the integrity and legitimacy of the election process! Yes, but: this type of voting is especially used by non-profit organizations. Their contests are designed to generate funds for their projects. Unlike a donation, voting people here can deposit as much money as they want to buy votes. They can give these purchased votes to their favorite or to themselves. So here the goal is not a fair election and the winner is not necessarily the one with the most beautiful photo, but the one who mobilizes the most supporters.
Published at: 2023-04-12 12:19 PM
Receive fees and donations ...Evaluate surveys: visualize long text with word clouds
PollUnit allows you to create various field types in your questionnaire. The evaluation of field types with predefined answers like multiple and single choice, simple fields for selection but also number fields is very easy and PollUnit automatically creates a series of charts and statistics for you.
More complicated, however, is the evaluation of a questionnaire that allows participants to enter free text or entire paragraphs. This becomes more and more difficult, the more participants are generated. PollUnit helps you to evaluate these texts in real time.
Word clouds or keyword clouds help you with this. A word cloud is a method for information visualization and shows you at a glance, which words are specified particularly often. The individual words are displayed in different sizes. The larger a word, the more often it was mentioned. So-called »Stop Words«, general words that should have no meaning for your survey, are filtered out. From the sentence »This is an example« only the word »example« would be included in the word cloud. Also, redundancies and different forms of the same word are removed by reducing all words to their basic form (lemma). This process of normalizing word forms, also known as lemmatization, increases the expressiveness and comprehensibility of your word clouds.
Published at: 2023-03-21 01:28 PM
Evaluate surveys: visualize...
Receive submission fees and donations with Stripe and PollUnit

Our PollMaker now allows you to link your Stripe account to PollUnit. This way you create a PollUnit wallet and you are able to seamlessly collect submission fees or donations from your attendees during the submission process.
This makes PollUnit your photo submission platform or fundraising campaign creator.
All you have to do is to go to the PollUnit Wallets section and link your existing Stripe account to PollUnit. If you have no Stripe account you can to register for Stripe through our page. Once you have created your PollUnit wallet you can easily use it in your photo contest or voting poll by selecting it in the advanced step. We allow two different types of payments: A predefined submission fee which is required to submit photos, ideas or whatever your voting is about. A donation allows attendees to donate any amount they want. You can also define a minimum donation amount.
Learn more in our PollUnit Wallet Tutorial.
Published at: 2023-02-07 10:47 AM
Receive submission fees and...URL Parameters: The key to better survey data and trackable responses
URL parameters, or URL variables, can be used to pass data to a URL or link to a web application. This data helps to enrich your survey or responses with helpful data and to understand them better.
Response rates and specific groups of survey participants can be monitored and analyzed. If you attach data to identify your advertising campaign, you can find out which campaign generates the most responses. This also helps to better allocate your budget. If you attach a user ID, you know which answers belong to your internally stored accounts – even if they enter a different email address or mistype.
How to do that? With PollUnit it is very simple!
Create a survey by starting the Poll Maker as usual and ask your questions. In the »Advanced« step you can enable the collection of URL parameters and specify the allowed or to be saved parameter names. For example, to transfer and save a campaign and user ID you allow the parameter names »campaignId« and »userId«. You append the URL parameters to the link to your survey, which you can send out in your newsletter or display on your website, for example. The first parameter is appended with a question mark and each additional parameter with a »&« sign. In our example like this: ?campaignId=123&userId=456
We take care of the rest. The transferred data will be stored with each participant. In the evaluation as well as in the export you will find the data enriched by the survey.
Published at: 2023-02-06 11:56 PM
URL Parameters: The key to ...
Custom matrices for surveys with predefined response options

In a matrix question, participants are asked to rate opinions on certain topics or statements on scales. These scales can be simple numbers from e.g. 1 to 5 or texts. The predefined scales allow the participants of the survey to enter their answers quickly and easily by selecting the answer. But also the evaluation of surveys is facilitated in this way. Matrices are especially popular for employee surveys and customer satisfaction surveys.
PollUnit offers the creators of surveys some popular scales to choose from. These include scales for measuring satisfaction, importance, probability and many more. How exactly a scale should look like can also depend on your own preferences and goals. This includes own answers and texts but also the decision if a scale should allow a draw. For example, with a scale from 1 to 4, there is no »middle« - with a scale from 1 to 5 there is.
To cover all needs, there is now the possibility to create your own scales. To do this, you as the creator must click on the plus symbol in a matrix or Likert scale question. Thereupon you can define your scale. Your user-defined scales will then also be offered to you as a template for selection in new questionnaires.
Published at: 2023-01-17 12:50 PM
Custom matrices for surveys...Create online surveys with question branching
Have you ever created a survey only to realize that you need to ask different questions depending on the respondent's previous answers? If so, we are happy to introduce you to our advanced branching logic.
The PollUnit branching logic allows you to create engaging surveys, customized to each respondent. Each questionnaire changes according to the answers to your questions. You can skip unnecessary questions, show special questions to a specific target audience or forward participants who do not fulfill the requirements to the thank you page. This way you create a unique experience, rather than a one-size-fits-all survey. Furthermore this help you to collect more accurate and relevant data.
How it works in a nutshell: PollUnit allows to create filters. You can apply multiple criteria to these filters. For example »Participants with the age of at least 21«. Each filter or participant group can be assigned to a logic. For example a skipping logic. You can simply reuse your filter in follow up steps of your questionnaire.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of survey branching and how to create the necessary conditions visit our survey branching logic tutorial. Visit our create surveys information page for a general overview about the PollUnit survey features.
By the way, survey branching is available free of charge for all our accounts!
Published at: 2022-12-28 11:33 AM
Create online surveys with ...
Create surveys and publish results

If you create a questionnaire with PollUnit, the results are only visible for administrators by default. But there are some cases where it makes sense to publish these results. Therefore you as the organizer can decide if results should be published.
The publication of survey results creates transparency. Scientific survey results can be checked and understood by other scientists. If you use a questionnaire for decision making or as a kind of vote, the publishing the results makes your survey more trustworthy. But also in public discourse you increase the credibility of your survey and allow insights into opinions and perspectives of the participants.
To publish the results automatically, you have to check the option »Publish survey results« in the »Advanced« step when using the survey maker. This allows every participant to see the results after filling out the questionnaire. You can change this option at any time by editing your survey. You can also publish the results when you close your survey.
Please keep in mind that published results should usually not contain personal data like addresses, names or even payment data!
Published at: 2022-12-22 08:07 PM
Create surveys and publish ...Tagging Responses to better understand the results
Tagging is the process of marking content with additional information and colors. So-called Tags can be used to highlight certain aspects of a response to better understand the results.
Our latest update allows you to apply our tags to almost all objects. This now includes comments, replies and responders.
Tagging or marking answers that are considered particularly important or relevant for the evaluation is an important component in the manual analysis of a survey. Answers that are clearly more positive or negative than others are marked. This allows you to access the answers later more quickly and easily and to include them specifically in the evaluation.
But also the tagging of certain population groups is possible and makes it easier for you to understand the results and to evaluate them specifically. You can also use tags to quickly filter for relevant participants.
Published at: 2022-12-22 04:25 PM
Tagging Responses to better...
Voting with private comments

Today we want to share a discussion we had with Michael O'Byrne who uses PollUnit for judging images. Particularly important in his case is a voting that is as uninfluenced / unbiased as possible. We believe that his requirements for PollUnit should also be of interest to many of you. Therefore we want to share them with you:
»In many cases, comments are a useful means of interaction and exchange of ideas. However, in any poll or survey where you are trying to rate an image or an idea, it is counterproductive to let your audience see the comments from others before they make their choice. [...]
Any one who expresses an opinion or gives information (that may be false, intentionally or not) will affect the outcome of the poll. In judging images, if a previous comment states »This is the best image by far«, that will result in other members rating it higher. Most people want to be agreeable. More so if the person who made the first comment is identified and is considered skilled or popular.«
Michael O'Byrne
This is why we integrated the »Private comment« feature. Once private comments are activated only the content owner, the comment creator and the admin can see comments. If a content owner answers a comment, it will also be visible to the creator of the answered comment.
In the advanced step when using the poll maker you can check »Private comments« in the »Allow comments« section. As an admin you can change this setting at any time. For example you can make comments visible after the voting is complete.
When we asked Michael if we could quote him for this blogpost, he gave us something else along the way. We are very happy about that!
»You can also share with them my opinion that your customer support has been outstanding.«
Michael O'Byrne
Published at: 2022-10-25 09:41 AM
Voting with private commentsPlant trees with PollUnit
Today we are announcing a new feature that is very close to our hearts. Starting today: For every purchase made on PollUnit, we will plant trees with the help of Plant for the Planet.
Plant-for-the-Planet is a global movement to restore forest ecosystems to address the climate crisis and prevent biodiversity loss.
Approximately 8% of our gross sales go towards preserving and rebuilding forests around the world. So even with the renewal of any subscriptions, a portion goes into new trees. On our price list you will find the approximate number of trees we can plant per plan purchase. Why approximate? We calculate on a daily basis how many trees we can plant. This can be more on one day and less on another. For an overview of where and how many trees have already been planted by PollUnit, visit the PollUnit profile of Plant for the Planet.
Published at: 2022-08-24 08:13 AM
Plant trees with PollUnit