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Google Forms – a more effective way to do surveys

Google Forms – A More Effective Way to Do Surveys

We are more busy now than we have ever been. So when we receive an electronic survey, how often do we take the time to respond to it. Probably almost never! For a business conducting a survey, the lack of response from the target recipients can be frustrating and extremely discouraging. This need not be so. This article provides a way to simplify the recipient’s experience, increase the response rate to your surveys and statistically analyse received responses.

Electronic surveys tend to come as an email with a link that takes the recipient to a form on a website. With the prevalence of internet scams & malware such as phishing and Cryptolocker, we have been trained not to open links. A more effective way to conduct surveys is to embed the survey into your email. This will allow the recipient to not only immediately see the content but also are assured that it is safe to partake in the survey. From experience, the response rate to a short and simple survey is very high – in excess of 78%. So a key tip is to keep it short and simple where possible. Take the time to really think about what you want to gleam from your surveys and limit it to a few simple questions.

Google has delivered an easy solution to do embed surveys into an email using Google Forms. If the recipient uses Gmail or Google Apps they have the ability to complete the form within the email. Otherwise there is a link at the start of the email that takes the recipient to the relevant site to complete the form. The process in creating an email with an embedded Google Form is relatively simple (see below).

Google Forms – creating and embedment in emails.

1. From your Gmail account, navigate to Google Drive or go to https://drive.google.com and click “Create -> Form”.

2. Complete the necessary questions for your survey (as shown below) and click Done.

3. When the “send the form to others” dialog box pops up, enter in the relevant email address you want to send the form to and ensure the “Include form in this email is ticked”. When you’re sure all the details are correct, click “Send”.Embed-Google-Form-Email-include-form-in-email.

4. When the client receives the email, they will see the survey embedded in the email and will be allowed to answer it directly instead of using the link. As shown in the example below, the recipient chooses the appropriate radio buttons and clicks Submit.

5. When the recipient clicks submit, a web page will open with a message indicating that it has been received. You can customise this message as you like.

6. You can then periodically check the results by opening the Google sheet which is created with the same title as what you named the form. (Google adds (Responses) to the end of the name as per below. Or another way is to open the Google form where you can edit the questions. Click Responses then view responses. This will also open the Google Sheet.

8. Bonus Tip: Setup instant email notifications when a client submits a form, to do this go back to the Google sheet of results. Click Tools, then Notification Rules. Click Add a Rule and select the box – A user submits form. Then Notify me with- Email right away.