Google Docs are some of my favorite tools that I use almost daily in my business. Since I only use Mac computers, I rely heavily on the Word & Excel docs to create documents and spreadsheets to share with my clients. I also enjoy using Google Docs because of the easy collaborative sharing features they possess. I can create a document with notes for an upcoming presentation and share that document with others like Chris or Katie who might be on the panel with me. They both can access the document and also add their notes to it without me having to do all the work. What is even better is now updates happen on real time and can be accessed from any device. So while I am on my Macbook, Katie on her iPad, and Chris on is iPhone, we can all see the document, make changes and have it appear instantly to the other two.
While these functions are awesome, I don’t believe it is the most powerful segment of Google Docs. This award is set aside for the form function in Google Docs. Have you ever wanted to create a simple contact form online to have people fill in their name and phone number but had no clue how? Well, Google Docs has you covered. While a custom WordPress site makes it easy to do so with various form plugins, template sites or static sites don’t have those options. Also, sometimes those plugins can be a little tricky to customize the fields to capture the specific information you want.
Google Docs gives you a simple way to build a contact form and embed it anywhere in a matter of seconds. So maybe you have a single property website that you want to insert a form for people to fill out and schedule a showing. Or, maybe you want to embed a form onto a page of your website on a specific community giving sellers the ability to find out, “What’s My Home Worth?” The possibilities of where you can embed these are great. You can even put them into individual blog posts for a specific event you have coming up.
But what if you don’t have that ability to embed the form somewhere? It also creates a link that points to a simple landing page that could be used for an ad in places like Craigslist or Facebook Ads. Here’s a simple landing page I created for our demo. This contact form was created in under three minutes. When someone clicks on the ad they will be directed to a landing page like this.
Easy to Read Spreadsheets
When a consumer fills out your form, it is then placed into a very simple Excel spreadsheet inside Google Docs. This spreadsheet timestamps the day and time that they filled it out and can also be edited and shared with others. Here’s a screenshot of how it would look:
As you can see, the spreadsheet can be color coded like this one for each member of the team as they respond to the leads for viewing the home. This keeps multiple people from all calling the same lead. Also, everyone can see who is contacting who and see the updates as those contacts take place.
Tips To Higher Conversion
Before I get into the tutorial on how to create these forms in Google Docs, lets first discuss a few things to increase the number of people filling out the form. First, don’t create a form that has fifty questions that take the person ten minutes to fill out. If it takes a long time or if too much information is being requested, they will simply leave and not fill out the form.
Secondly, keep the required fields to just the minimum information you MUST have. As you can see in the demo form I asked only four questions of which only three are required. While I would like to capture the leads phone number, it isn’t required at this time to add them onto a mailing list for market reports. If you require too much information from a consumer they can get uneasy and start filling in fields with either bogus information or will not fill it in at all and exit out.
Lastly, make sure the questions are simple and to the point. If you start asking questions that are too complex or have multiple choice answers with confusing options, the number of people filling out the form will go down. Keep it simple and succinct. The consumer won’t take 10 minutes to think through their answer and type it out. Instead they will say I don’t have time for this and leave.
How to create form in Google Docs
Here’s a simple screen cast tutorial that will walk you through how to create these simple contact forms inside Google Docs.
If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments below!
September 9, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Great post, very helpful
Thanks
Grover
September 9, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Great post! My best promos are with a simple google form even with a generic background they provide. One of my promos brought in around 350 contacts after only taking 10 minutes to make.
September 10, 2011 at 8:34 am
Thanks Grover!
Ryan- That is some awesome results from something that takes so little time!
September 11, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Very Cool, thanks. Have you ever tried using the Google email ads to generate clients?
September 12, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Great write-up Jeremy, definitely think that there’s lots you can do with Google Docs!
September 12, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Great post Jeremy!
September 13, 2011 at 1:03 am
I never knew you could do this with Google Docs. Very informative. Thanks for this. I’ll definitely be trying it out.
September 13, 2011 at 9:13 pm
Great Article! I hate using Javascript on my sites which is what you usually need to do when you create a form. Also, if you don’t use WordPress then getting things done in Dreamweaver can be a bit of an annoyance.
September 16, 2011 at 6:57 am
I often just use google doc when I want to plug email templates in to an html email creator never thought about using it this way! Thanks alot!
September 16, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Jeremy, this is very cool. I love Google Docs and didn’t realize I could create forms there. I’m definitely adding this to my toolbox. Thanks for the post and tutorial!
September 18, 2011 at 6:22 pm
I love Google Docs but I use Jotform too. Do you use Jotform for anything?
September 21, 2011 at 6:01 am
Great information Jeremy. Simple yet amazing. As always, thank you for sharing.
September 24, 2011 at 11:53 am
Good information – I didn’t know about this capability and this looks like it can be useful. Thanks!
September 25, 2011 at 6:44 pm
how do i use the forms as a landing page? I dont see the direct link in the gdocs?
Thanks
Evan
November 12, 2011 at 3:46 pm
Thank you a lot for sharing this with all of us you actually realize what you are speaking about! Bookmarked. Kindly also discuss with my web site =). We may have a hyperlink change contract among us
December 1, 2011 at 3:38 am
Do you know how to paste a picture below the test question in trhi kind of form?
December 14, 2011 at 10:21 am
Is there a way to capture the information and then drop them on another page in your blog or website or is the THANK YOU confirmation the only option for where the form goes after it’s filled out?