Tutorial: How to create an Online Voting Contest – Easypromos - Online Helpdesk

The Online Voting Contest application allows you to organize a contest where participating users can vote online for their favorite candidate(s). Voting candidates can be published by the contest organizer, or by the users themselves by uploading their photos, videos, projects or stories. It is the ideal application to organize contests based on popular voting or organize photo, video or story contests and reward users with prizes.

The application includes a fraud control system to detect and block users who try to add fraudulent votes.

The tutorial is organized as follows:

1. Presentation of the application

The "Online Voting Contest" application is formed by one or several galleries that display content that participating users can vote online. We call the content to be voted on a nomination, and the nominations can be created by either the contest administrator of the contest, or by the participating users. A nomination is shown in two manners. The reduced view, which is how the application is displayed within the gallery, and the expanded view, which displays the nomination and candidate information on a single page and is accessed when the visitor clicks on the reduced view from the contest gallery. Example of the reduced view of applications with its 3 sections:

Section 1 includes the name of the candidate to vote for: additionally, it can include a short description, a profile photo or logo, and the country of the candidate. In the event that participating users upload their own content, the candidate's name and profile photo can be displayed.
Section 2 includes visual content such as photos and videos: when a user uploads their entry, they can add multimedia content to make their participation more attractive. When setting up the contest, you can define and limit the formats available to users, which include: images, videos, YouTube videos, PDF documents, texts and links. The organizer can also limit the number of images or videos that are allowed to be uploaded in each entry.
Section 3 includes voting information: This section is optional, meaning you can create a content gallery without votes. If voting is enabled, this section will show the vote button and the total number of votes accumulated by the candidate. The number of accumulated votes can be hidden from the contest configurator.

Example of the expanded view:

The expanded view opens when a user clicks on the reduced view of an entry in the gallery, or when a user accesses directly from the entry link. The expanded view is also divided into 3 sections:

Section 1 shows a carousel of all the contents of the application: images can be viewed in large sizes, videos can be played, PDFs can be read, etc.
In section 2, in addition to the basic information of the application, the detail or description of the image or video that you are viewing in section 1 is shown. In this section you can also show links to the website and social networks of the candidacy.
In section 3, in addition to the voting information, the button to share the entry is included.

Candidates to be voted for in the gallery can be uploaded by the contest participants themselves, or by the contest organizer. In this way you will have two types of voting contests depending on who uploads the content.

User-generated content (UGC): The contest administrator will be able to configure the content upload phase: dates, frequency of participation, type of content allowed (images, videos, texts), screen design. You will also have tools to view and pre-moderate the applications uploaded by users and communicate with them. The dates of the content upload period and the voting dates are independent, so the administrator has full control of when each phase opens and closes.
Content uploaded by the administrator: The administrator has a tool within the contest editor to upload the entries. In this case, users will participate only by voting for the content created and selected by the organizer.

Voting contests can be organized, in which users upload the content to vote as well as the organizers themselves. It is a common case in contests where there are users who upload their applications from the web, and other users who send them by email to the organizers, and they must upload the contest applications manually.

2. Create the promotion

Below we explain all the steps to create your Online Voting Contest:

1. Access your Easypromos dashboard.

2. Next, click the "Create New Promotion" button to start creating your promotion, and under the Contests section, select the "Voting contest" application.

Next, select the template you want to use based on who will upload the content to the contest (users or you as the administrator).

3. Content creation and upload

The selection of the template will determine the next step to follow:

3.1 User-generated content

The "User Uploaded Content (UGC)" template is ideal for organizing photo, video or story contests, so that each user can upload the content they want to participate with. Additionally, as a contest administrator you can enable voting so that the entries can be voted on.

The contest allows you to configure the multimedia content type that users will be uploading (photos, videos, text, PDF, or links), and you can enable pre-moderation so that the content is not published until you have previously validated it.

Below we explain all the steps to correctly configure the contest with the "User Uploaded Content" template.

Step 1. Access the “Upload your participation” stage

This stage corresponds to the screen where users will participate in the contest by uploading their own photos, videos, text, external links, YouTube videos or PDF documents.

Enter the Editor of the promotion > Participation stages. There, select the stage type "Upload your entry" and click the pencil icon to access and configure it:

You will find the following configuration tabs:

1. “Options” tab: here you will find all the stage configuration options:

Stage Name: this is the name that will be displayed on the stage layout screen.
Stage description: optionally, you can describe what this participation stage consists of, which will also appear on the stage distribution screen. You can describe and indicate the type of multimedia content that users can upload (photos, videos, written stories, etc.) for instance.
Dates: allows you to schedule the start and end date of participation for this stage.
Stage Image: this is the image that will identify the stage on the stage layout screen.
Frequency of participation: you will be able to determine the number of times that users will be able to participate in this stage as well as the frequency of participation, which can be:

- Daily
- Per hour
- Weekly
- Total

2. "Requirements" tab: optionally, before the participation screen in the stage, the promotion can present a requirement as a complement to the user's participation, which is an additional action that users must carry out before being able to participate. The available Requirements are: validate a code, upload a purchase receipt, watch a video, scan a QR code or condition participation on having already entered another stage. Learn more about the Requirements here.

3. "User generated content" tab: here you can configure and customize the stage participation screen. The configuration of this tab is divided into two steps:

A. Nomination Information

This option is recommended for contests where users nominate other users or present a project, that is, the nomination is not done using their name. For example: Musical band contests, contests for the best project, etc.

When enabled, a new page will be added to the content upload process, which the user will need to complete with basic information about their video and their entry:

Specifically, you can configure the following fields to require additional information about the participant's entry:

1. Request Nomination name. Allows users to enter a name for their entry, such as a pseudonym, stage name, or alias. If this option is not enabled, the First name and Last name provided in the registration form will appear in the public Gallery.

2. Label for Name field. Allows you to modify the title of the "Name" field to another term (e.g., "Pseudonym").

3. Request a Short Description. Enables a text field where the participant can add a description to the video.

4. Request a Profile Picture. Allows the user to upload a profile picture.

5. Request Country of Participation. Allows the user to indicate their country.

6. Request Links and Social Networks. When enabled, a text field will be automatically added where the user can optionally provide an external link (e.g., link to their website, link to a PDF, etc.). Additionally, various social media platforms will be added for the user to optionally complete.

7. Additional Fields. Allows you to request additional fields to complete the user's participation. By default, these fields will be private and only available to administrators. However, you can choose to make them public to display additional information in the contest gallery.

B. Multimedia content

Under this tab you will find all the configuration options for the participation mechanics and the multimedia content that users must upload. The configuration options available are the following:

Allow photo and image file upload: (PNG, GIF, JPG): enable this option if you want to allow users to upload photos.
Allow video file: (.MOV, .MP4, .AVI, .MPEG, .WMV, WEBM, .3GP, .FLV, .OGV, .ASF, .MPG, . M4v): enable this option if you want to allow users to upload videos upload.
Allow inserting YouTube videos: enable this option if you want to allow users to upload a URL of a video published on YouTube.
Allow text-only content: enable this option if you want to allow users to upload texts. Recommendation: Use this field to ask users to submit a text or story. You can set the minimum and maximum number of characters required, up to a maximum of 5,000 characters. For longer texts, it is recommended to use the field for uploading PDF documents.
Allow PDF document: enable this option if you want to allow users to upload a PDF document to participate.
Allow content based on external links: enable this option if you want to allow users to add an external link URL in their entries.
Allow videos from TikTok (only public videos): Allow TikTok videos (public videos only): This option allows the user to connect their TikTok profile to select a video posted on their profile. To enable the user to select a video, they must authorize TikTok permissions. Additionally, it can be limited to videos that have a specific hashtag.

Additionally, in the "Options" section you can configure the following options:

Min./max. number of media content: this option allows you to define the minimum and maximum number of media files that you allow to upload in each user participation (maximum 5 per participation).
Maximum file size: configure the maximum size of media files you allow (minimum 1MB and maximum 500MB).
Hide file description: allows you to hide the media file description box. This option is useful when the administrator does not want any file description.
Character restriction in the Description of the media shared: If the "Description" field is enabled, you can set a maximum of characters the description will include.
Mandatory file description: by enabling this option, adding a description along with the media shared will be a mandatory requirement in order to finalize participation. Additionally, you can set a minimum and maximum number of characters for the description, with an upper limit of 2,500 characters.

Step 2. Other options

Under the "Other options" tab you will find the following configuration options:

1. Enable the option to pre-moderate entries before publishing: this option allows entries not to be published and visible in the contest's public gallery until the administrator validates them and authorizes them to be published.

Check in this tutorial how to moderate user generated content.

2. Tags: It allows presenting users with a series of tags so they can label their participation in the contest. This functionality organizes the contest content into categories, enabling users to filter the gallery by these tags and quickly find the content associated with each tag.

Discover how the Tag system works in this video.

3. Cover: you can allow users to create a cover with a title and description for their entry. It is recommended if users can upload more than one photo or video to participate.

3.2. Content uploaded by administrator

The "Admin Generate Content" template is ideal for contests and awards galas, where each award has multiple finalists or candidates, and users must vote online for their favorite candidate.

The contest allows you to upload the candidates and present them in a gallery so that users can vote for their favorite(s). Users, to vote, must register in the contest through the Easypromos login and registration system, which includes an anti-fraud system.

The promotion administrator is given the tools to create and manage candidates to be voted for. The tool includes all the options to present the nominated candidates in the best way: for each candidate you can configure the name, a description, add a profile picture, links to their social networks, URL to a website, and you can link images, videos and documents.

For each candidate, users will be able to click to see the details of the nomination and get their unique link to share:

Below, we explain the steps to register the candidates.

Step 1. Candidate management

The first step is to upload the candidates. To do this, access the Editor Participation Stages Candidate Management tab:

Candidates will be grouped into a category. By entering the category, you will be able to begin uploading the options to be voted.

Note: The Premium version is limited to only 1 category of candidates. In the White Label version you can create multiple categories to organize indedepent voting and nominations.

Step 2. Upload the candidates

When you click on Create Candidate, a form will open where you can upload the information for each candidate:

Name: name of the entry that voters will see.
Description: short presentation of the candidate.
Profile picture: you can upload a 400x400px image that will be displayed next to the name.
Country: candidate's country if relevant.
External Link: link of the candidate, for instance their website to know more about them.
Link Label: the text of the external link that will be displayed in the candidate's file.
Networks: links to the candidate's social networks.

Once the candidate's information is uploaded, click on Continue to upload the candidate's multimedia content. You can upload up to a maximum of 5 files per candidate:

The candidate is now created and will appear in the Candidate Gallery, where it can be edited at any point:

4. Gallery Settings

The next step will then be to configure the gallery, which is the page where all the content of a candidate's category will be presented, whether it is content that has been uploaded by the users themselves or created by the contest administrator.

To do this, the gallery must always be linked to a category of candidates, which may be different depending on the type of contest:

Contest where users upload content (UGC): The gallery will be connected to an "Upload your participation" type stage.
Contest where the administrator uploads the content: The gallery will be connected to a category of candidates.

In the editor's stages list, you can see which category the gallery is linked to:

Below we explain the available gallery configuration options. To customize the gallery, access the “Voting gallery” type stage, which is where the multimedia content of the contest will be displayed, and where users will enter to vote, whether the content shown was uploaded by the administrator or it was generated by the users.

4.1. Configuration of the dates

The start and end dates of the stage are those that will determine when access to the gallery will be available for users to view the photos, texts or videos uploaded by the participants or by the admin. Additionally, if voting is enabled, these dates will also determine the period during which users will be able to vote.

4.2 Gallery Visibility - How to enable or disable the gallery access to unregistered users

The contest administrator may control access and visibility of the contest gallery at any time. By default, the contest galleries are visible and accessible to all users who access the contest, also to users who have not yet registered. This means that users who have not yet logged in and registered to participate in the contest will be able to see the content of the contest gallery:

Unregistered users will only be able to see and share the content that have been published in the gallery. If they want to participate in the contest and vote for one of the entries, the system will ask them to log in and if it is their first time participating they will also be requested to fill in the entry form:

Alternatively, you may limit access to the contest gallery(s) to only registered users, so that only users who are logged in can see the entries, share them and vote for them. To do this, access the Editor > Participation stages > Public Galleries tab where you can disable the public Galleries:

4.3 Options to display candidate information

As administrator, you can configure what information you want to show about candidates in the public gallery. To do this, enter the configuration of the Gallery stage and under the "Vote Gallery" tab you will find the following options:

Show candidate name: allows you to show or hide the candidate's name.
Show candidate avatar: allows you to show the candidate's profile photo (if any).
Show candidate country: allows you to show the candidate's country (if any).
Order of candidates in the gallery: define the order in which the candidates will be presented in the gallery.
Display tools: allows you to show the total number of entries on the gallery screen as well as present a search tool for users to look up a specific entry from the gallery.

5. Voting settings

Configure next the voting in your contest from the Editor > Participation Stages > Gallery stage > Voting Gallery tab.

5.1 What is the voting user experience like?

The promotion is made up of different pages that the user will navigate across when interacting with the promotion to vote. Specifically, to vote in the contest the participation flow will be as follows:

When accessing the promotion for the first time, the userS access the Welcome page, where they will see the button to enter the Contest Gallery, which presents all the photos, videos, texts or PDFs that users will be able to vote for.
Before being able to vote, the userS must identify themselves with one of the enabled Login methods, and if it is the first time participating, register by completing the registration form.
If already registered, they will only have to log in to vote again.
After identifying themselves, the users will see the information of the participation they are about to vote for, to confirm it.
Finally, if the email validation is enabled, users must confirm their email address for the vote to be counted.

In the following video we show the user experience when voting in the Voting Contest:

5.2 How to enable and configure voting?

When you generated the draft of your promotion, the voting system came enabled by default. You can enter and check at any point if voting is enabled through the "Enable voting system" option, which you will find in the "Vote Gallery" tab, found entering the Editor of the contest > Participation stages, and entering the Gallery stage:

The "Voting Type" option allows you to configure how you want the voting system to work in your contest. You can choose between two different ways:

Simple votes (1 vote = 1 point) - default option: In this type of voting, for each image voted, the system will assign 1 point to the nominated candidate/entry. Additionally, you can configure the minimum and maximum number of entries users will be able to vote for when participating (minimum 1, maximum 10).
Advanced votes (1 vote = X points): In this type of vote, for each entry they vote for, the user can decide the number of points they want to assign to it. To do this, you will need to configure the different the number of tiers, and number of points assigned for each level. See below an example of the configuration and User experience:

Additionally, you can enable a page with the classification of the most voted entries, which allows you to publicly display the number of votes that each participant has obtained and show a link to a dynamic leaderboard:

A new page will be created, accessible from the Gallery, with the classification of entries, including the number of votes the participants have received in the contest.

Note: If the option to "Publish the number of votes and the ranking of the most voted" is not activated, the Gallery will only show the participations but the votes for each entry will not be displayed publicly, so the number of votes for each participation will only be visible internally by the contest organizer.

5.3 Set voting frequency

Under the “Options” tab of the Gallery, you can configure the user's frequency of participation . This corresponds to the number of times users can enter and will be allowed to confirm their vote:

Note: if you allow voting for several entries in each participation, users will be able to vote only once for the same entry in each participation. On the other hand, users can vote again for the same entry in their next participation. For example: if the number of entries is 2 each day, they can vote for the same entry twice a day.

5.4. How to see the voting record?

Entering the "Users" section of the promotion, you will be able to see at all times how the contest votes are going. Specifically, once you are in the "Users" section, click on "Votes": the list of participations in the gallery will appear, where for each entry, you can see the total number of votes it has received. You can sort entries to see the users who have the most votes. Additionally, by clicking on "View" you can see the name of the users who have voted for that entry:

In the "Votes" section, the two following actions are available:

Export all votes: this option allows you to download the list with all the votes casted and votant information.
Export results: this option allows you to download the list with the final results of the voting, organized as a ranking. For each candidate /user's entry, you will find the number of votes received.

6. Participant registration system

To participate in the digital Voting contest, users must identify themselves with the Login method(s) that you, as an administrator, have enabled in the promotion. The current identification options available are: Email, Facebook Login, Google Login, Linkedin Login, Twitch Login, Number of client, Phone Number. To configure which Login system you want to enable in the promotion, go to Editor > Pages > Login and Registration > Login tab, where you can select which methods users can identify themselves with:

Discover here the different types of Login and all the configuration options.

Note: Easypromos also allows SSO integration with external user authentication systems. Contact us for more information.

Additionally, if it is the first time that the user participates in the contest, they will be requested to complete the registration form, which must be filled out with the data configured by the administrator. The form is 100% customizablem to collect the user data you are interesting in obtaining.

To configure the entry from fields, go to Editor > Pages > Login and Registration > Registration tab, and click the "Add element" button to add the fields and information you need to collect from participants:

Important: In contests where users can both upload their candidatures and/or vote, the identification and registration process will be the same for both users who vote and for users who participate by uploading their candidacy to the contest.

If you want to collect extra information only from users who participate by uploading an application, you must use the additional fields that you can enable in the application configuration stage (see point 3 of this tutorial).

7. Fraud control system

The Voting Contest application includes the Easypromos security system and is activated by default. The Easypromos Security system is made up of:

Precautionary measures:

Detection and blocking of malicious emails: includes temporary emails, invented emails and email aliases. In addition, Easypromos maintains a database of fake email domains.
Anti-Robot System: implements mechanisms for detecting and blocking voting attempts from automatic bots.
Detection and blocking of malicious IPs: Easypromos has a database of malicious IPs, VPNs and proxies.
Filters and restrictions by country and IP: allows you to limit the logs and frequency of connections by IP, and restrict the connection countries.
Security Level Indicator: tool that helps the organizer configure a secure contest, including alerts in case of disabling the anti-bot system or double verification of email addresses.

Reactive Measures:

Security Center with Blocked actions record: Every time the system blocks a fraudulent access, a log will be generated so that the administrator can analyze and discover possible fraudulent patterns, to help prevent them.
IP address analysis tool: allows you to see all the activity of an IP address, view its properties and block all users of that IP and their votes with one click.
Domain analysis tool: allows you to view the distribution of email domains registered in the contest, facilitating the detection of fake or temporary emails to block votes and users.
Easypromos has a specific security team that periodically reviews all alerts generated and blocks users and votes if fraudulent activity is detected.
All security measures are managed centrally from the contest Security Center.

In the event that the administrator or Easypromos blocks users and votes through reactive measures, the percentage of fraudulent votes will be displayed in the contest's vote management tool. These fraudulent votes may be deleted.

8. Sending Emails to Participants

With the email platform included in the promotion, you can establish periodic and automated communication with users participating in the contest.

Below are some examples of emails you can create:

Send an email to all participants to thank them for their participation, including the link to their individual photo in the contest gallery, so they can share it to get votes.
Inform users whether their photo has been approved or rejected by the person responsible for moderating the content uploaded by users in the contest.
Send an email to users who have voted in the gallery, including the name of the participant they voted for, along with the link to the individual photo they voted for.

Check out the different email sending options you can automate with the Email Platform.

9. Customize the design and complete the configuration

Once you have configured the contest the following step will be to complete the configuration of your promotion. You can enter and customize the design template with your own colors and texts, entering the legal texts of the campaign, configure the viral content shown when the promotion is shared, etc.

Check out the tutorial to finish setting up and customizing your promotion.

10. User management and statistics collection

Once the contest is over, you will have different tools as an administrator to manage users and their participation. Below we detail the tools you have available.

10.1. Management of users

From the promotion's internal management page you will have access at all times to the list of registered users, where you can perform the following actions:

See the unique participants of the contest.
See the total participations of the contest.
See the participations in each of the Galleries or participation stage to upload content.
Use the Users management tools: delete users, filter participants according to different criteria (registration data, number of participations, assigned prizes, etc.).
Export lists to .CSV files with the information of registered users.

See all the Users management options available to you.

10.2. Download the user generated content

You will be able to download in ZIP file all the multimedia content uploaded by users in the contest.

To do this, from the same "Users" section and open the tool menu, to select the "Multimedia content" option there. You will then have the option to "Download Multimedia Content":

Note: The ZIP file will not include videos from Youtube nor external links submitted by users, or texts. To obtain the links or Text content, select the "Export entries" option.

The system will generate one or several ZIP files with all the multimedia content of the contest, depending on the total weight, which can be downloaded from the "Download Center".

To access the Download center, enter the "Settings" of your account:

9.3. Check the contest Statistics

In addition, from the "Statistics" module you can obtain detailed information on the visits and activity of the users who have participated in the promotion (number of registrations per day/hour, device used, etc.), as well as data on the different participations (participations per day/hour, device used, etc.).

Check out the different statistics and information that you can obtain from the promotion in order to analyze the performance of your Voting Contest.

11. Manage and publish the winners

Easypromos provides a complete Prize and Winners Management system that will allow you to create the prize or prizes that you want to give to the users who participate in the contest, as well as configure how you want to assign the prizes and select the winners.

Specifically, for the Voting Contest you have several ways to assign the prize to the winners, depending on how you want to reward participants:

Randomly: You can carry out one or more draws among all participants or a subset of participants and obtain a certificate of validity with the results of the draw. Follow the steps in this tutorial to carry out the random draw.

Manually: You can assign manually one or more prizes to contest participants. For example, you can assign the prize to the participants who have achieved the highest number of points and received the most votes. Follow the steps in this tutorial to assign the prize manually.

Directly: You can assign a promotional coupon to all users who just uploaded their multimedia content or voted in the contest. Follow the steps in this tutorial that explains how to create the promotional coupon type prize to assign it directly to all users after participating or voting in the contest.

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