Tutorial: How Does the Voting System Work? Follow
Photo, Video and Writing contests can enable the voting system in order to viralize the promotion and make it more dynamic.
The voting system is supported by a series of anti-fraud measures which make it possible to monitor and control any suspicious activity by voters, enabling the organizer to manage the contest more efficiently. Learn more about Easypromos fraud control alerts and its fraud control system.
In this tutorial you’ll find out more about:
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1. The voting experience
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2. How to set up the voting system
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3. How to disable voting
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4. What information you can obtain from voters
1. The voting experience
There are a number of ways for users to access the gallery and vote for their favorite entries.
If users gain access using the main promotion URL, they’ll reach the public gallery via the “View Entries” button on the promotion’s homepage. From here users will be able to view all the entries and vote for the one they like best.
Users are often invited to visit the gallery by participants seeking to obtain votes for their entry. Users who have been directly invited to vote will be taken directly to the URL of the individual entry to ensure speedy voting; however, voters will also be able to see the whole gallery of entries by clicking on the “View All” button:
Voters will then be able to see and click on the “Vote” button:
A window will then be opened, initiating the voting process:
1. To cast a vote, voters must first identify themselves by verifying their email address. Here you can see what the window will look like:
2. After completing that first step, the user should then verify that they are not a robot. Normally, this simply entails clicking on the “I’m Not a Robot” box. However, the ReCaptcha may ask for further verification if it thinks this is required.
3. Upon completion of these two mandatory steps, the “Vote” button is activated and highlighted. The user can then cast a vote. As indicated in the text beside the button, voters are accepting the terms and conditions of the contest when they click on the button.
In addition, you can display extra buttons in this same window encouraging voters to follow you on social networks. You can set up this feature in the “My Networks” module. This option can be activated and will always be an optional step for the voter. It looks like this:
Upon voting, the user will be presented with the following screen informing that the user needs to verify the email address in order for the vote to be counted:
Upon verifying the email address they will be shown the confirmation window. You can customize the text in this window to give voters the chance to share the participation they voted for.
The user can share the participation using the following options:
1. Via social networks: Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
2. Via email.
3. Using the link: The user will be able to copy and paste the direct link to the promotion to share it across other channels (email for example).
Mobile device users can also share with their contacts via instant messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, Line and Telegram.
2. How to set up the voting system
The voting feature comes preconfigured with standard values which will work for the majority of contests. These are:
1. Make entries votable. By default, contests come preconfigured with the option to vote for the entries. If you don’t want users to be able to vote, you should disable this option.
2. Make number of votes public. The “Vote” button can display the total number of votes that the entry has obtained.
3. Make users who voted public. You can publicly display the names of all voters alongside the entry that they’ve voted for.
This is how the number of votes and the names of voters will be displayed:
4. Number of entries users can vote. Define how many votes each user can cast in a single contest. Leave this blank if you do not wish to place any limit at all. A user will never be able to cast more than one vote for the same photo.
5. How users can identify themselves in order to vote. Users will be requested to insert their first name, last name and email address when voting. An automatic validation email will be sent to the inbox of the user. Users must open and click on the validation email in order to count their vote.
6. Disable CAPTCHA [Not recommended]. This option allows to disable the captcha control. We don't recommend to disable the captcha module because it is the most effective way to block Automatic Bots from voting. Only disable captcha if you understand what captcha is, you know its benefits and you want to assume the risk.
Users who don’t identify themselves won’t be able to cast their votes
Learn what information you will obtain from users who have voted and how you can download it.
7. Disclaimer. Legal message that appears below the vote button. Use it to explain in one paragraph who you are and what you will do with the data collected from voters. Leave empty if you don't want to show any disclaimer.
8. Message displayed after voting.You can customize the message which appears to voters thanking them for their vote and encouraging them to share the entry.
9. Emails and domains allowed. This option appears if you configure the authentication of the vote via email, and it allows to limit the voting to an email or a set of emails or, if you prefer, to a specific email domain. This option can be used to organize a voting contest to a closed group of users (for example, the employees of a company). In this case, only users who use an email or the email domain you have set up will be able to vote in the contest. You can enter several emails or email domains (one per line).
10. Include buttons to encourage users to follow social networks as an optional step to vote. Activate this option if you want these buttons to appear in the voting window. They can be configured in the General > My Networks > Networks section.
11. Fraud control. You'll be able to see the alerts of votes and the Fraud Index for each participant in the list of participants of your contest.
12. Disable IP controls. By default, the platform's voting system incorporates IP control for voters, as part of the security and fraud control system in contests where there are public votes. This option will allow you to disable this security measure. Important: This option is only recommended in case of organizing private contests, in order to eliminate any restrictions on contests organized in private environments, such as contests between workers
3. How to disable voting
If you don’t want your contest to allow voting you can disable this feature via Pages > Gallery > Votes. Disable the "Make entries votable" option and the whole module will be deactivated.
4. What information you can obtain from voters
To know what information you can obtain from voters, click here.
Comments
2 comments
"A user will never be able to cast more than one vote for the same photo".
Why this restriction?
Why can't a user submit MORE THAN ONE VOTE for the SAME photo? For example, if there were a feature or setting that allowed the user to vote only once a day for the same photo, then the user would be able to able to vote once every day, for the same photo.
So in a competition spanning 30 days, the user will be able to log in everyday and vote once per day for his or her favourite entry (photo or essay). This will help drive traffic back to the Facebook page that hosts the contest (via the easypromosapp FB application tab on that FB page), which is what many companies wants to do (increased traffic to their corporate FB page).
Personally, I find the rule "A user will never be able to cast more than one vote for the same photo" too restrictive. Already there are the Captcha image click-ons that the voting user must go through. Isn't that enough to verify that the user is a human? Please allow a setting that allows N number of votes per day for the same entry. That would make the contest more flexible and it would suit many organisations who run their contests in different styles.
I am also interested in more than one vote per image per user. Is there anything on the horizon?
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