How to Survey Your Customers using Google Forms

Surveys are a great way to gather feedback and ideas from your customers so you can build your business.
In a previous post, we explained the benefits your company gains from surveys. In this post, we’ll guide you through the process of creating a free survey using Google Forms.

Set Up Your Survey

To get started, go to Google Forms and create a new form using a blank template, as shown below:

You can customize the template with your company’s branding. Click the color icon in the upper right-hand corner.

This allows you to change the color of the survey, select from available graphics, or even upload your company’s branding. We’ll use a (fictional) restaurant called “Andrew’s Sandwiches” and upload an image file of the company’s name with a picture of a sandwich.
Google Forms is designed to make it easy to enter text, add new questions, and drag and drop to re-order. We’ll get started by entering the name of the survey at the top as well as a quick explanation about the survey itself, as you can see below:

Now let’s make the survey itself.

Ask Your Questions

We’re ready to enter our first question. Click on the first blank question and you’ll see several options.

1. This drop-down box changes the question format. Choose from multiple-choice, checkbox, textbox response, free-form answers, and more.
2. Clicking this icon will duplicate the question so you can easily edit it based on the same format.
3. Choose this if the question is required for customers to answer in order to complete and submit the survey.

We’ll start with a multiple-choice question to determine how often the survey-taker visits Andrew’s Sandwiches:

You can include as many options as you need here.
To create a new question, either click the “duplicate” button or the “plus” button to the right of any question:

Now we’ll create a question and choose the “Linear Scale” option from the drop-down box. This lets the customer answer a question on a scale of your choice. Notice how it looks different from the previous question, as the options are horizontal rather than vertical.

You can also create multiple columns. Let’s say the restaurant is busy for lunch and dinner but wants to use a happy hour to draw more of a crowd in the late afternoon. We’re interested in what would entice customers to visit the restaurant in the afternoon:

You can also add questions that bring the survey-taker to a different part of the survey depending on their response. Say our fictional business, Andrew’s Sandwiches, wants to increase visits from families with kids. We could create a new section with questions only for parents that dine at the restaurant with their kids to find out what they want.
Click the “Add Section” icon to create questions for the parents:

Here’s what the section looks like after adding a couple of questions:

Now we want to go back to the original section and create a question that asks whether the survey-taker has kids, so we know whether or not to allow them to continue the survey. We create a simple yes-or-no question, make it mandatory to complete the survey, and then click on the three dots icon in the lower right-hand corner (labeled “1” in this image):

Select “Go To Section Based on Answer” and you will see the drop-down options next to each answer (labeled “2” in the image above). In our example, we want to send the visitor to the next section we created just for parents if they answer “Yes”, and submit the survey if they answer “No”.

Launch your Survey & Collect Feedback

Good work! Now we’ve completed our survey and it’s time to get responses. Click on the “Send” button in the upper right-hand corner of the page to see options for how to collect responses. (If you wish, you can see the sample survey for Andrew’s Sandwiches here.)
Google Forms has simple analytics tools that allow you to view responses. Look for the Responses link at the top of your survey and click on it. Here’s a sample of what you’ll see:

This tutorial only scratches the surface of how to Google Forms to create surveys. With a little bit of practice and experimentation, you’ll be collecting valuable insights about your customers in no time. 
If you’re ready to set up a Google Form, make sure it’s branded with your business identity. Namecheap offers GSuite for $5.00 a month. Right now you can get $25 in Namecheap credit when you sign up for a new GSuite plan and connect it to your domain.