ASP.NET 3.5 Website Programming: Problem-Design-Solution

Chapter 6. Opinion Polls

Opinion polls consist of questions with a set of options from which users can select their response. Once a user votes in a poll, it's customary to show them current statistics about how the poll is going at that particular time. This chapter explains why polls are useful and important for different websites. Then you will learn how to design and implement a simple and maintainable voting module for the TheBeerHouse site.

Problem

There are basically two reasons why polls are used on a website: because the site's managers may be interested in what their users like (perhaps so they can modify their advertising or product offerings, or maybe in a more general sense to understand their users better) and to help users feel like they have some input to a site and are part of a community of users. Good polls always contain targeted questions that can help the site's managers learn who their users are and what they want to find on the site. This information can be used to identify which parts of the site to improve or modify. Polls are valuable for e-commerce sites, too, because they can indicate which products are of interest and in high demand. Armed with this information, e-commerce businesses can highlight those products, provide more detailed descriptions or case studies, or offer discounts to convince users to buy from their site. Another use for the information is to attract advertising revenue. Medium to large sites frequently display an "Advertise with Us" ...