If you’re not sure what Apester is, according to their website, it’s a tool which helps you ‘engage with your readers on a whole new level’. How? By ‘using interactive units to make your users a part of the story’. What does this actually mean? It’s a tool for publishers to easily create polls, quizzes and even ‘personality’ tests, e.g. based on answers, you’ll sit within a defined ‘personality’, for example, ‘geek’ (talking from past experience here) to help keep their users engaged as opposed to just (potentially) reading.
I just started using Apester recently (not on this site… yet) and it’s really cool – and best of all, it’s free. Before you think it, I have no affiliation with Apester – just an end user on behalf of a publisher. So what’s so cool about it? It allows you to pretty much instantly create polls, quizzes and more (as above) and embed these on your website, by simply just dropping the code generated by Apester where you want it. Better still, it has a WordPress plugin for all those using WordPress – and it’s responsive, so it (or your website) doesn’t ‘break’ on mobile, tablet, etc.
Why would you use it? Instead of having people just read (or potentially read) your content, Apester allows users to interact too. In doing so, it can help increase time on site / potential dwell time, mooted as a potential SEO factor. The data obtained from Apester can also be repurposed for marketing collateral, e.g. 45% of respondents believe Newcastle United will win the Premier League in the next three years (I wish… although Leicester City did open the door for these ‘fantasies’), 35% said they’d get relegated again and 20% think they’ll stay in the Sky Bet Championship for at least three years (hopefully not). Here’s a poll I created earlier:
As much as I wanted to vote Newcastle, maybe next year…
If you’re not convinced so far, then don’t take my word for it – Apester’s clients include CNET, The Huffington Post and Fox Sports, to name a few. Last year, Apester raised $5 million in Series A funding, with Apester themselves claiming they work with 400 publishers – with more to come. Bearing in mind it’s free, easy to setup and can help you engage your users, why wouldn’t you give it a try…
As always, be wary adding anything to your website without thoroughly testing it. With tools like Apester, which commonly use iFrames e.g. a web resource within a website such as YouTube, it’s important to keep an eye on page speed. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to talk through this post – or any of the others.