Okay, Google, how many uses for a Google Form?
I really love it when there’s one tool or app that can do lots of things. It earns its keep and it means you don’t need to master a million different things to do different things.
One of the multi-purpose tools that I find myself using more and more is Google Forms.
“I love a Google Form” was exactly what I said one day recently whilst I was sat around the table with my family.
I didn’t randomly blurt this out. I was, in fact, completing a Google Form for my daughter’s school. Nevertheless, my husband and son thought it was hilarious that I would declare my appreciation for a web-based software tool so emphatically, but I do think they’re really great.
Google Forms are great because they…
- are simple to use in both setup and for the end-user
- collect and collate responses beautifully and effortlessly
- have multiple usage applications – the list is endless
A small amount of set up and you can then leave the Form doing its thing, collecting the responses for you. And, depending on your preferences when you create them, your end-user doesn’t even need to sign in to Google to fill one out.
Simple swaps
I recently changed a data collection process for a client by moving it over to a Google Form. The previous process was outdated, we’d been doing it that way for 9 years. It involved me keeping a record of call types that I deal with on their behalf. Each call is categorised, then each month/quarter we have a total for each call type.
By setting it up as a Google Form, we now have a snapshot view at any point in time and it saves time by me not having to collate the responses into a bar chart each quarter – as the Google Form does this for me already.
101 uses for Google Forms
Although it’s predominantly a survey administration software – similar in use to TypeForm, Survey Monkey etc, Google Forms have many uses beyond that. I’ve used them for collecting feedback, finding a suitable meeting time across a group of people, surveys, voting, submission requests.
Here are some ideas for uses of Google Forms:
- Surveys
- Feedback requests
- Work and project upload facility
- Advertising submissions
- Editorial submissions
- Event registrations
- Applications
- Opinion gathering
- Quizzes
- Voting
- Finding meeting dates (similar to Doodle)
- Any data collection
- Any type of Q&A
- Any opinion polling
As well as collecting real-time responses that can be viewed as an overall snapshot or as individual responses, you can also collect responses on a destination Sheet. Each response is time/date stamped or you can use unique identifiers such as names or email addresses.
You can find a step-by-step guide to Google Forms in this ‘Beginners Guide to Google Forms’ How-To Geek article.
Bonus activity
I promised a bonus activity. Here it is. If you’d like to see a Google Form in action, please complete this form here: https://forms.gle/kAYiUS2sbfMtxZiy6