Audiences can vote with their watch!

Posted by polltogo  |  July 9, 2015

In what is a world first, we recorded the first-ever response to any poll using a watch. A poll in french, no less! (It’s normal, the team is in Paris at the moment and the app finds polls geolocalized nearby.) All polls created using the polltogo platform are accessible by anyone using any type of mobile device — now it’s possible on a smartwatch too.

In this little demo, we show the use of the polltogo voter app that we just released for the Pebble watch platform. Unlike with other web-connected devices, feature phones and smartphones, where no app is required to respond, a potential participant requires an app to vote using their smartwatch. If you have a Pebble watch, get the app here.

Note: The video shows a poll that was set by its creator to be “findable” via geolocation, thus making it open to the public in a geographic region. Polls created with polltogo can also be kept private, so that they can be given to specific groups of people.

PowerPoint polls with polltogo

Posted by polltogo  |  November 26, 2014

A wise man once said: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” This famous quote by Benjamin Franklin is now the basis of a well-accepted educational methodology, referred to as “experiential learning.” But you don’t need to be a teacher to be interested in this concept; anyone who will ever have to make a presentation, give a talk, or deliver lecture should keep this in mind.

We’ve undoubtedly all had the experience at some point of being an audience member and, by one reason or another, completely disengaging from the speaker. While we can’t help you give better presentations (that being said, always be clear on the message that you want to deliver, select only the essential information to prevent information overload, and practice your delivery), a simple way to involve your audience with the subject of your talk is with a poll. Everyone loves to give their opinion, and a live audience vote invariably energizes the whole room. For those few moments, both during, and after when you discuss the poll results, you will have the full attention of all in attendance.

example presentation poll slideHow to achieve this? Our users already know — by creating a polltogo mobile-accessible poll. Each created poll is assigned a unique short web link and QR code than can be inserted in a presentation slide. To make things even simpler for our users, today we added the option to automatically generate a pre-filled PowerPoint slide after creating a poll. The slide looks like the one shown here and contains all the necessary information, including a live hyperlink that can be used to display the live poll results from the web.

polltogo poll sharing optionsMore specifically, sign-in on polltogo.com (creating a PowerPoint slide is not possible from our mobile app), then, after having created a poll, go to the sharing section of the page, where you’ll find the new PowerPoint option. Clicking the main link creates a PowerPoint slide with a standard 4×3 aspect ratio, but if you want a wider version choose the 16×9 link. After downloading the PPT file, feel free to modify/adjust the slide as you see fit! (We’d love to see some of your designs!) You can either build a presentation around this poll slide, or insert it into an existing slide deck.

The next time that you’re planning to give a talk or have to make a presentation, think “outside the slide” and try creating a polltogo to engage your audience.

Polling the public using a T-shirt

Posted by polltogo  |  November 16, 2014

polltogo T-shirtAfter spending some time improving the way we interface with Zazzle to allow our users to automatically generate shirts with their poll’s details, it dawned on us that this was an aspect of polltogo that we hadn’t well publicized. It’s certainly worth talking about!

You may think that creating a T-shirt with a polltogo poll sounds like a bit of gimmicky fun, but it has some potentially interesting “pro” uses. When you have a limited marketing budget (e.g., for flyers/signs) and your target audience is around you on the street (or at an event/conference), wearing your poll is a creative hack to incite more participation in your poll. And of course, because you smartly created the poll with polltogo, voting will be friction-free for your potential participants since the poll is accessible using any mobile device, with no special app required.

Tip: Provide open WiFi at your business site for your customers

Posted by polltogo  |  May 21, 2014

If you manage a store or restaurant, make sure that your customers can access the information they need, but also provide you with some data as well.

We don’t need to tell you that the use of smartphones by consumers on-the-go is growing, but have you actually tried accessing the mobile internet from your retail location? If your business site is in a mall, or underground, there’s a very good chance that your customers will be frustrated every time they open their smartphone to do anything but a simple telephone call.

If you plan on using polltogo to collect feedback from walk-in traffic, you need to facilitate the mobile experience as much as possible. Instead of relying on variable 3G/4G cellular data connections, providing open WiFi internet access as an added alternative will ensure that customers can post to their social media accounts (hopefully about your products & services!) and scan QR codes, such as those of your polltogo poll, to their heart’s content.

Our new iPhone app

Posted by polltogo  |  January 22, 2014

This comes as no surprise to our existing users, nor those of you who have been following our startup, but we released a new polltogo iPhone app! It was actually first released quietly a few months ago, letting the polltogo user community help us iron out the kinks (you guys are great!) — but now we’re ready to tell the world. Go forth and download away! (It works great on iPads too.)

Download the polltogo iPhone app


The polltogo iPhone app

We created the polltogo iPhone app to help you better manage and monitor your polls on the go. Though it is by no means necessary to be able to participate, you could suggest it to your target audience as well (better if done in advance, so that people can download the app ahead of time using WiFi) so that they can use the “Participate” interface to more easily type in poll codes (just the ending part of a poll link, not the full URL), use the built-in QR code scanner, or find open “findable” polls on a map.

© 2015, polltogo is a trademark of Inspirapps Inc.