SUCCESS STORY
Yahoo shows what a reader
forum should look like today
The “Poll of the Week” (PotW) is a weekly article format on Yahoo UK that allows readers to vote on current topics ranging from politics and social issues to pop culture and lifestyle trends. It offers a quick way for the broad audience to share their opinions and see how others feel about trending debates. An analysis from the editorial team, published later in the week, shares reflections on the readers polls’ results, allowing the Yahoo community to revisit how their view compares to others.
“In creating the Poll of the Week, we wanted to develop a poll-based article format that would keep people coming back week after week.”
Alexander Kay Senior Editor, Yahoo UK
SUCCESS STORY
Yahoo shows what a reader
forum should look like today
The “Poll of the Week” (PotW) is a weekly article format on Yahoo UK that allows readers to vote on current topics ranging from politics and social issues to pop culture and lifestyle trends. It offers a quick way for the broad audience to share their opinions and see how others feel about trending debates. An analysis from the editorial team, published later in the week, shares reflections on the readers polls’ results, allowing the Yahoo community to revisit how their view compares to others.
“In creating the Poll of the Week, we wanted to develop a poll-based article format that would keep people coming back week after week.”
Alexander Kay Senior Editor, Yahoo UK
Maximum retention:
Why readers come back every week
Topics that have generated a strong response from their readers included areas of daily life that have a political slant, such as bin collections and council tax.
Lifestyle topics such as winter fuel payments, the right to work from home and food choices were equally strong. The poll that attracted the most comments was a piece about the intensity of modern headlights.
Maximum retention:
Why readers come back every week
Topics that have generated a strong response from their readers included areas of daily life that have a political slant, such as bin collections and council tax.
Lifestyle topics such as winter fuel payments, the right to work from home and food choices were equally strong. The poll that attracted the most comments was a piece about the intensity of modern headlights.
60 % Interaction,
three times the Click Rate
What makes the format so strong
Polls created for Poll of the Week often get very high engagement rates. A strong topic will engage more than half of the readers, achieving an engagement rate of 60%, three times higher than the average for polls across the site. It is also common to see a CTR of 2% or more on post-vote banners. In addition, Yahoo’s Poll of the Week banner, recirculating users to the PotW landing page, has had a strong post-vote CTR of over 3.2% in March 2025. This CTR was higher than any of their other post-vote banners, indicating a growing user affinity for this format.
More opinion, more depth:
How Yahoo is further developing its survey format
Recently, the Yahoo UK editorial team has enhanced the community-centric nature of the format by inviting readers to comment on the PotW’s topic. The incentive was to feature the best submissions in the results article later in the week. They have received a great response from their audience, who have submitted thoughtful responses via a form-based system.
About Opinary
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