SquareOffs
We joined the team at SquareOffs® to build a social voting poll used by digital publishers to promote meaningful conversation, increase engagement, and create new revenue.
SquareOffs® is a social voting poll used by digital publishers to promote meaningful conversation, increase engagement, and create new revenue. They’ve reached 250,000+ new users since they launched with an aim to tally millions of votes in 2018, and they’re in the process of building strategic partnerships with high-traffic sites globally.
Inserting a SquareOffs directly into an article or post.
Increase Engagement and Frame the Conversation
Engagement is an important part of any publishers metrics, and helps inform authors and publishers about the popularity of their content. Media publishers rely on this type of engagement, and providing simple ways for it to happen is crucial to their success. Historically, publishers have relied on outdated and clunky comments sections and engagement tools to gather feedback, and these tools often lack the allure and simplicity required to actually encourage people to participate in meaningful online discussions.
SquareOffs wanted to change this. So, they reached out to us to create a plugin that would enable publishers everywhere to receive direct feedback from their audiences. The SquareOffs plugin opens up an authentic communication channel to help publishers drive engagement and gather insights into their readers. And it works so well because the plugin doesn’t utilise the standard open text field for comments; instead, it allows publishers to direct conversations through a microdebate™ platform, by enabling audiences to vote and comment on a topic with two options. Instead of a stream of unrelated comments, publishers can benefit from framing the conversation and enabling the audience to express themselves using an improved engagement tool.
Promoting Meaningful Conversation on 50% of the Web
We’re delighted to support SquareOffs in their announcement and release of the plugin, which is available on the WordPress plugin repository.
As a tool, SquareOffs has diverse potential, and can be used in a variety of ways. Some of those include,
- fostering friendly sports debate
- conversing about the latest political news
- reviewing products
- getting feedback from your community on the latest health and beauty trends
- speculating around the latest entertainment news
Why Human Made
We spoke to Jeff Rohr, CEO at SquareOffs, to explore a little of their decision in engaging us in this project. Originally, SquareOffs was only available on the web application Squareoffs.com, so users would have to create a SquareOffs and then copy and paste the shortcode into their WordPress WYSIWYG editor. To streamline the experience, SquareOffs decided to build the technology directly into WordPress, and engaged our expertise to create the solution.
The decision to build a plugin for WordPress seemed obvious: when you build on WordPress, you’re building for 50% of the web. Their selection process to find a technology partner involved extensive research into WordPress agencies worldwide. Jeff was clear that our reputation and track record of plugin development was astounding, and they were really impressed with our deep immersion and experience in the WordPress community. They knew we’d have a comprehensive view of the project and how a WordPress plugin should look and feel. Plus, our experience releasing plugins in the WordPress directory would be beneficial in spreading the word about SquareOffs.
“We interviewed many different WordPress agencies prior to selecting Human Made. We’re glad we did our homework and we couldn’t have been happier with the buildout. We feel great about the end product and can’t wait to keep building with the Human Made team.”
– Jeff Rohr, CEO at SquareOffs
Interested in increasing audience engagement? Read about the how we improved content distribution and engagement for USA Today.
