PDF I just had to write about this. Google has recently added an automated survey feature to the Google Docs suite. The survey is a great tool. Once you’re logged in to your Google docs account you can choose “create new” and then “form”. Here you can design your survey with a choice of theme/designs and then choose from a mix of multiple choice, yes/no, text and a few other question types. Once you’ve created the fields, you can give your form/survey a title and intro text explaining what the survey is for. Then you have the option to change the “thank you” message and whether the participants can see the survey results or not. The neat thing about the survey feature is that the results are automatically stored in a spreadsheet in your Google Docs account. You can then choose to manually share this document with other Google users or keep it to yourself.
When the form is finalized you are given a link that can be used to email or publish the form elsewhere for your audience to complete. You are even provided with the embed code to place into your own website design format.
Why do I Need a Survey?
Surveys are a great way to connect with your audience and find out user experience with your company. This particularly useful for companies doing business online, you can find out how they like the format of your online store and determine any “pain” areas for your customers. Maybe they think the checkout process is too long, or they have a hard time finding products etc… All this is great information for tweaking your website and making it a better shopping experience for your customers. At the same time you are building customer retention and reducing your site bounce rate.
A Humorous Experience With My Google Survey
Anxious to test out the new tool, I quickly developed a 5 question survey to learn about the scooter industry. I created the form and tested it to see how and where the data was stored in the spreadsheet. This worked perfectly first time without any glitches. To promote the survey and gain user feedback, I created a couple of posts within industry related groups on LinkedIn (along with a few additional sites). After posting, and as I usually do, I proceeded to go back into the live post and test the url. I kid you not, after clicking the link I received the following message:
“Warning. Suspected phishing page. According to Google’s safe browsing policy, the requested external link maybe a forgery or imitation of another website designed to trick user into sharing personal or financial information…..”.
Yes, that’s right Google has detected that its own auto-generated url is a possible phishing page! Check out the screenshot below.
Once I had recovered from the excitement, I needed to figure out a fix. The simple use of a URL shortening service like bit.ly generated a smaller alternative url that I used to post the survey across social networking sites and via email. After testing once again, I did not receive the “warning” message.
Make sure you take advantage of the great new tool from Google!
About Sam Beamond