Your free Google account gives you access to most of Google’s product line – Sheets, Docs, Drive, Gmail, Calendar, etc. It also gives you access to Google Forms, a simple yet often overlooked tool that has a plethora of impactful use cases.
Google Forms is completely free. Here’s how it works: you create form questions though a web browser. When it’s complete, you can send the link to friends and colleagues, put the link on a website or embed the form onto a webpage for people to fill out.
After that, all that’s left is to evaluate the form responses by turning them into chart data, viewing individual responses or seeing answers grouped together.
Google Forms is excellent for:
Teachers
Forms can easily be turned into quizzes by flicking a toggle button in settings within Google Forms. In addition, question order can be shuffled and randomized so students can’t compare notes.
If a question is multiple choice, each answer can be shuffled and randomized also.
Professionals
It’s easy to get survey feedback for departments, teams or an entire organization.
If using Google Forms with a work or school account, you can anonymize the form (for surveys) or collect email addresses (for t-shirt sizes, feature requests or menu preference questions, for example).
Small businesses
You can embed a form directly onto a website. Think about feedback forms, requests for quotes, applications and other inquiries.
Town leagues and organizations
Parents, volunteers and other group participants will love being able to register for camp or little league online through a browser. Responses go right into a Google Sheet for easy sorting into groups and teams.
Bonus: When the registration date passes, you can stop the form from being able to accept responses.
Customer satisfaction surveys
In addition to being used on a website or being sent out to all employees, you can also manually send anyone a link to a Google Form at any time. This is great for sending out a customer satisfaction survey for a recently completed project or a finalized sale.
To get started, sign into your Google account and either go here or get there from Google Drive and create a new form. You can create a blank form with question types ranging from dates to dropdowns to checkboxes and more.
You can also start with a prebuilt template with categories to help you for your particular use case:
If I haven’t convinced you yet, here are some extra features that make Google Forms really great:
- You can collaborate online with others to create the form.
- You can require a sign-in to make sure people only submit once, or allow them to submit as many times as they want with no Google account needed.
- One-click toggle to activate or deactivate a form to accept submissions, while still keeping it around for future use.
Are you hungry to use Google Forms but don’t know how? Watch my 30-minute course, Google Forms Essential Training, today.
Topics: Productivity tips
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