Google Forms has revolutionised data collection making surveys easier than ever. With Google Forms, Create various types of forms to simplify your workflow. The user-friendly forms will boost your productivity by collecting targeted responses.
What is Google Forms?
Google Forms is a part of Google Drive's suite of productivity tools that you can use to create custom forms, surveys, event registrations, opinion polls, quizzes, and questionnaires and collect real-time responses. It is an awesome independent tool that doesn't require any dedicated software to create forms, and you can use it online from your smartphone or web browser.
Once you create forms, you can share them with anyone using the external shareable link. You will receive responses automatically in Google Sheets Spreadsheet, making the data analysis smoother and easier. It allows you to create customized forms with various question types, including multiple-choice, dropdown, and short answers.
It is not limited to text because it lets you add images and videos to the forms. Also, you can customize your layout to make it stand out using its predefined templates. If you want to collect responses and insight from an enormous group of people, Google Forms is the best choice.
Features of Google Forms
If you know how to use Google Forms can do wonders for you. Below are some of the prominent features of Google Forms that you can use.
Create Appealing Forms and Questionnaires
With Google Forms, create eye-catching questionnaires and different types of questions. You can add various question types with extraordinary customization to create visually appealing forms. To make these forms more engaging and interactive, you can add as many question types as you want, including multiple-choice, dropdown, checkbox, and short answer questions. With its predefined templates, you can create a professional-looking form quickly. Moreover, adding media such as images and videos make Google forms more immersive for respondents.
Customizing Setting and Appearance of Google Forms
Now, you can create forms that align with the standards of your organization, thanks to Google Forms's extensive customization options. It has options to color scheme, font, and background of the form, as well as add logos and other branding elements the form. Creating a form that matches the brand's identity will make a lasting impression on the respondents. Interestingly, you can customize the confirmation message once respondents submit their responses.
Adding Logical Jumps and Conditional Questions
Google Forms lets you create a more personalized response by inculcating logical jumps and conditional questions. You can complete a more dynamic and highly customized form that yields targeted responses using dependent questions and logical leaps. For instance, if a user selects a specific answer, Google Forms will automatically skip a particular question or show a follow-up question based on the respondent's answer. This feature is typically beneficial in obtaining higher response rates.
Integration with other Google Products
Google Forms offers seamless integration with other Google products. That being said, you can save forms directly to Google Sheets, Docs, or Slides, depending upon the nature of your documents, for further visualization. Moreover, you can integrate Google Forms with other Google Products like Classroom or Sites to create quizzes, surveys, or feedback forms. This feature is incredibly beneficial to streamline workflow, save time, and centralize the workload.
Collect and Analyze Data on Respondents
As said earlier, Google Forms saves data directly into Google Sheets so users can visualize and conveniently analyze it using its built-in tools. With its real-time response feature, you get an email notification whenever someone submits their response. In addition, you can export the proposed response in multiple formats like CSV, PDF, and Excel. You can play with this data instantly, and it helps in making informed decisions.
How to Create a New Google Form?
Like other Google products, Google Forms also require a Google account. If you don't have a Google account already, you need to create a Google account first. After that, follow the below-mentioned stepwise process.
1. Go to forms.google.create on your web browser.
2. Sign in with your Google account.
3. You will land on the main page of Google Forms. Here you can create your form from scratch or use any templates.
4. To explore all the available templates, click on Template Gallery. There, you can see multiple predefined templates in a categorized order.
5. If you don’t want to use a template, click the “Plus” button.
6. Give an interesting title with a brief description of your form.
7. By default, you will have one untitled question. Give input to the question and set different options for respondents.
8. To add more questions, click on the little “+” sign on the right of the question.
9. You can set the question type by clicking the drop-down menu. By default, it is set to multiple-choice questions. Click on Multiple Choice for a drop-down menu containing all the question types.
10. Once you are done inputting your Google forms, send it to your potential respondents. Click on send button on the right of your screen. You can also add editors once you click on send button.
11. You can use Google Forms to develop standout surveys or questionnaires.
How to Customize Google Forms?
There are many ways you can customize your Google Forms. You can match your creativity with the forms by changing the theme and background image to add pagination. Let us explore all the possible customization options in detail.
Change the Form's Theme and Background Image.
1. Click on the customize theme option in your forms.
2. Once you click on it, it will open a drop-down menu.
3. There are many options, like changing the font type, theme color, and even background image.
4. Once you set the background image, you can adjust its opacity using the given settings.
Add Questions and Options.
1. If you have more than one question, click on the “+” button on the right side of the current question.
2. It will create a new question for which you are supposed to input the question statement, options, and, most importantly, the question type.
3. If your question has multiple options, click Add Other.
4. To change the question type, click “Multiple Choice” to explore the list of available question types. Click on your required question type.
5. This way, you can create different types of questions in Google spreadsheet.
Add Pagination
1. You need to access the pagination settings to create a multi-pages survey form.
2. The last option, Add Section, is on the right side of the questions.
3. You will have your survey divided into multiple sections by clicking on it.
4. Assign different questions to separate sections to make life easy for your respondents.
Add Title and Description
1. Adding titles and descriptions is the simple yet most important part of creating survey forms, as it indicates the purpose of your survey.
2. Once you log in to your Google account, click the “+” icon to create a survey from scratch or click on already-defined templates.
3. In this tutorial, I have used the Customer Feedback template. I opened the template from the existing one and changed its titles and descriptions by clicking on it.
4. Once you click on your title and description, you get additional formatting options to change font style, insert a link, and remove current formatting in one go.
How to Add Logical Jumps in Google Forms?
Logical jumps refer to skipping a specific question or popping a follow-up question once the respondent has submitted his response to the previous question. Adding logical hops in Google Forms helps to obtain more crafted and targeted responses. Here’s how you can add logical jumps to your surveys in Google Forms.
1. Open a new Google Form or an existing one for which you wish to add logical jumps.
2. Be mindful about thinking of your questions to arrange them strategically and how you want your respondents to answer them.
3. Then specify key decision points where you want your respondents to direct on separate paths. This step is crucial for adding logical jumps.
4. On each of your questions, you can see three vertical dots. Click on them and select “Go to Section based on Answer.” It will set up a logical jump based on your respondent’s answer.
5. Using phrases like " take them to," lead them to," or "send them to." is recommended to let the respondents know the section they will head to based on their answers.
6. You can repeat this process for each question individually. Use powerful words like a guide or navigate to clarify it for respondents.
7. You can also add a "Back to Previous" button to give your respondents more control.
8. Before sending the form, review your state to ensure you have used the correct sections to jump and also to use power words.
How to Share and Publish Forms Using Google Forms?
Once you have set up your survey forms using Google Forms, it's time to launch them and share them with your respondents. Follow the below-mentioned stepwise process to publish your Google Forms.
1. Assuming you have properly customized your survey with detailed titles and descriptions and customized your theme with background images, it's time to finally preview your work.
2. Click on the small eye icon near customize theme option to preview your creation.
3. After previewing the form, it's time to share it with your respondents. Click on the “Send” button, and you will have several options to share your forms.
4. You can share the form via email, link or even embedded HTML to place it on your website.
5. Select your required sharing type and click on send. Remember, this file will be open to anyone who can access it. If you want responses from specific respondents, you can add email addresses.
Free Alternatives of Google Forms
Google form is a fantastic platform to create forms that you can use for surveys, quizzes, questionnaires, customer feedback, and whatnot. It’s a free web-based application and part of Google productivity suite such as Google Docs. However, suppose you are unfamiliar with Google products or the platform. In that case, you won’t enjoy using Google Forms because the user interface for a new user may not be so attractive.
For this purpose, we have created a fantastic free alternative to Google Forms that serves the same goal with a more pleasing interface. WPS Office is a free Office suite similar to Microsoft Office but more compact, lightweight, and easy to use. It has three applications, and you can use Writer to create forms like Google Forms. It is simple to use and allows you to design a highly functional and personalized layout by adding fields like text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, and drop-down menus. If you have not tried WPS Office for forms, And wps office is compatible with all formats of office components such as Word, excel, PPT and so on. Currently, there are more than 500 million active users in the world，try it, and you won’t regret it.
Conclusion
Creating survey forms has always been challenging; thanks to Google Forms, you can complete surveys, questionnaires, quizzes, customer feedback, and more. They are straightforward to use and have myriad benefits, including free of-cost nature, excellent integration with other Google products, next-level customization, different types of questions to include, and its logical jump feature to receive sharp and targeted responses.
Google Forms are easy to create by signing in to your Google account and heading to its official website. If you are in haste, you can use the predefined templates for free, or you may want to design a form yourself to unleash your creativity. Once you finish creating layouts, it's time to publish, where it has multiple options for sharing. Google Forms is a fun way to receive your clients' most relevant and valuable responses.
