I recently had a client ask me about the benefit of polls on a website. Many news sites have polls on their site, and one of the sites I maintain is included in those sites. But what benefit, if any, do they provide? And could your site use them?

The short, simple answer to the second question is probably not. But let me go into the first question to explain why that is the case.

When viewing poll results on a website, the average web site viewer is not interested if seeing the results of 10-50 people. They generally want to see the input of 100+ people. Hundreds of people. Not you and your 10 closest friends. So unless your site is already getting plenty of traffic, your poll is likely to be largely ignored.

So what if you do have a site with plenty of traffic? What value can a poll add? Well, let's clear one thing up. It's very unlikely that adding a poll will drive additional traffic to your website. Not much traffic, anyway. You may occasionally get a poll whose topic catches the eye of people who would not normally check out your website, and some of them may even stick around. But that is not the norm, by any means.

If you put up a poll, you should be doing it purely to benefit your already existing members and visitors. It can spark topics of conversations on message boards. It can allow everyone to see what the overall feeling is on a particular topic that is specific to your website's niche. It can even let you gain feedback on your target audience to better cater to them.

It will not drive tons of traffic to your site, with extremely rare exceptions. It will not result in tons of revenue. In short, it's not going to help the bottom line at all.