| About InfoWorld : Advertise : Subscribe : Contact Us : Awards : Events : Store |
 |
||||
|
||||
 | ||||
 |
|
|||
 | ||||
|
|
|
||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 NEWSWeb polling and survey software By Andre Kvitka November 15, 1999 ONE OF THE better methods of building online communities is to attract user participation using online polls and surveys. These features can help build a community and have tremendous value as information-gathering tools. Quick polls and short surveys help site editors quickly gather user feedback about site design and navigation, quality of service, new products, and a lot more. Longer surveys can help companies identify future product and service goals. The problem has always been how to find the time and resources to build and incorporate surveys into existing Web sites. Cogix's ViewsFlash, Version 2.3, set out to change this, and based on my test succeeded with flying colors.
What makes ViewsFlash different is that it's the only online poll and survey application I'm aware of that employs Java servlets and a Web interface. The software can be hosted on a Web server, which can be the main Web server, a shared application server, or a dedicated ViewsFlash machine. The key to flexibility One of ViewsFlash's key characteristics is that there isn't any client software; all interaction, including administration and poll design, is done using a Web browser. The ViewsFlash servlet stores poll and survey states in a directory on the ViewsFlash machine. Data is gathered from users as ASCII files and is stored on the same machine. Saving user data in a simple comma-delimited format allowed me, as site editor, to download the data into Microsoft Excel or any other application that massages information. It was extremely easy to create and configure online polls using ViewsFlash; the creation and maintenance workflow was very intuitive. For example, I created a poll that asked my site users to pick the current presidential candidate they thought would best fit the job. Using the Web-based interface, I typed my question and then specified a starting and ending date, as well as the time at which I wanted the poll published on the site. I loved the flexibility I had over the visual aspects of the poll. For my test, I used standard radio buttons, but I also had the choice of check boxes, drop-down menu, or single-line or multiline text fields. Although ViewsFlash provides default poll and survey templates, I could change the look and feel in any way I chose. For example, I could have included candidate photos as part of my test poll design. After creating the poll page, I moved on to the results page. Still using the Web-based interface, I selected how each question would be tabulated and answered. For my test poll, I decided to return percentage bars for each of the answers but had many more choices, including number count, average, rank, and text answers. Poll it your way Once a poll is created, it is ready for publishing. Publishing a new poll or survey means that HTML code is created and stored on the ViewsFlash machine. You have two options for embedding this HTML in existing pages, depending on whether the site is using a Web publishing system to dynamically generate content or relies upon static HTML pages. With a Web publishing system, ViewsFlash-created voting forms and real-time results can be retrieved through an HTTP API, and thus can be added into dynamically created pages. These APIs request the HTML code needed to display the current poll in a page and request the HTML code displaying the current results of a poll. When relying on static pages, ViewsFlash-created HTML code can be displayed using server-side includes or alternatively can be written to static pages on the Web server by the ViewsFlash software automatically. Protecting survey validity Another fantastic set of features let me control security to prevent duplicate voting and protect the sampling method, which is important if the poll or survey is to have any statistical validity. To prevent duplicate voting, I instructed ViewsFlash to toss a cookie that would expire at the same time as the poll did. As part of the sampling configuration, I had a few good choices. If, for example, I decided I didn't want all site visitors voting or answering survey questions, I could first instruct ViewsFlash to present the poll in a pop-up window instead of embedding it in the existing HTML pages. I could then specify how many people I would want to respond before I disable the poll. Companies interested in online user interaction or visitor feedback should consider ViewsFlash. Further, for companies with a large volume of Web traffic that want to make their site a more customized experience, this product may be well worth the investment. It's simple, yet powerful tools will help you create polls and surveys that will definitely set your site apart. Andre Kvitka is a independent consultant who has been reviewing products for over 10 years.
 RELATED SUBJECTS  Web TechnologiesSPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
SPONSORED LINKS
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
