Upgrade your fonts
Are you suffering from boring-looking Google Forms? Don't worry. In this video, I'm going to show you five different ways in which you can make your forms that much more engaging. Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
Now, the first thing we're going to do] that's going to make our form look a lot different from everyone else is by changing the text and the fonts. In fact, this is something that we've only been able to do in the last little while.
If we come up to the top and select, customize theme, you can see that we now have a text style area where we can change both the header, the question, and the text itself.
So rather than just using the Roboto default, that even sounds pretty ordinary, doesn't it? I'm going to come here and I'm going to select something like, oh, I don't know, maybe Impact, something that's going to really make my title stand out.
Next, we can change the question,which I think is rather important. So that the question stands out and is a little more bold than the answers themselves. In this case, I'm going to choose a font called Lexend.
And if you see a font that has a little arrow to the right, you can see that you have other additional options in terms of the size of the boldness or maybe if you want something extra thin.
In this case, I'm going to select, semi bold, so that those questions really stand out.] They really differentiate themselves from the answers, and I can see at a glance that there's only three questions in this particular survey.
Last but not least, you can also change the text of the answers, and this will also apply to the description of the survey as well. But I'm going to leave that as is. Already, this survey is starting to stand out and look different from a standard survey.
Add animated header image
The second thing that we're going to do is to add a header image, something that's going to be a little more eye-catching at the top of our form. Now, typically the first place I like to visit when it comes to finding images is Google Images.
And what I'm going to do is do a search for background GIF, because what you can do is add a moving image to the top of your form. I was already looking at this one here.
And if you click on these images, the GIF will be in play, so you can see what that's going to look like.] All I need to do in this case is right-click, and I'm going to choose, save image as.
Then, back in Google Forms, under the same customized theme pullout, I'm going to select, choose image, for the header. Our first option is going to be able to choose from one of the default themes, which are selected here.
And there may be something worthwhile looking at, but keep in mind, every other Google Form user
is presented with these options as well. In this case, I'm going to select, upload, browse, and I'm going to go find that image that I downloaded just a moment ago.
Once the image is uploaded, you will notice that you will be pre-selected with the size and dimensions which will fit to your form.
Here you can see the entire image in the background, but if I want to drag this up or down, maybe I want something just a little bit lower, right about there, that's what I want to include in my form.
I'm going to select done. And in just a few seconds, it will add this to the top of my form. And remember, because I chose a GIF in this particular example, yes, there's going to be something moving.
So when they access this form, already it's going to be that much more engaging
Make your background stand out
for them to interact with. The other thing you will notice whenever you upload any type of header image is that Google Forms will try to match those colors for the background color and the other accent colors within the form.
You can see that this light blue in the background and this somewhat darker blue up top is being pulled directly from my header image. But I'm going to suggest that you go one step further
and make your colors even a little bolder. By default, Google Forms has a habit of selecting a fairly light color for the background. But because we have a white background here for the questions themselves, I suggest you go for something a little darker.
This makes your questions stand out even more.] And don't forget, you can always add your custom colors to your color palette as well. Now that we've changed the look of the form, both by an image color and text, let's see if we can make some of the questions and the layout a little more interesting.
I'm going to come down here to this last question
Limit checkbox choices
where I'm asking, which color do you like the most? And I've given the user five different options. Now, we need to be careful when it comes to some of our questions, because in this case, I'm asking for a favorite or only one answer. But you know what?
I might actually get more valuable information if I ask them to select their two favorite colors or maybe three favorite colors, not just their number one favorite,
because maybe I like blue the most, but orange is a very close runner up.So in this case, we're going to create a selection of checkboxes and then set a limit as to how many they can select.
Our first step is to come over here to the dropdown, and we are going to select checkboxes, but we can't leave it in this state. Why? Well, this is going to allow a responder to check as many or as little checkboxes as they like,
and that's not going to give us very valuable data. First off, I should probably change the question so they know what to do. Maybe I'll say, please select your two favorite colors. Something like that. Now, we can't leave it as is, we need to select these limits.
In order to do so, we're going to come down to the three dots here and we're going to select response validation. This is going to allow us to choose a minimum, a maximum, or a specific number.
The first option here is select at least. So we can either say there's a minimum, select at most, a maximum, or select exactly. Now, because I've framed this question as please select your two favorite colors, I'm going to say select exactly.
I'm going to come over here and type in the number two. It also gives us the option to type in a custom error text message. So here, I'm going to say, please select two, and maybe I can add an exclamation mark if I want to.
So now when someone is presented with this question, they will need to select exactly two from the answers given. If you ever want to remove this validation, you can always come over here to the far right and click X.
But let's see what this will look like for the user. I'm going to select the preview button and now we can see what the form will look like to our users. Let's scroll down to that last question, please select your two favorite colors.
If I select orange, immediately it's going to say, please select two. Now, it's true, this warning message is always going to appear, even if they are in the process of selecting others. If I go and select blue, perfect, I've filled the requirements.
It will allow me to check another box, but once again, I will not be able to submit the form because I have this error message in place. So I'll have to choose between red and orange, and yes, I'm going to deselect red, and now I can proceed with submitting this form.
By the way, I'd like to thank Rondalene for asking this question
about how to use limited checkboxes. If you have a question about how to use Google Forms, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Create multiple sections
Lastly, let's take our forms to the next level by adding sections. Sections can be extremely helpful, especially if you have a large number of questions, and rather than sending the full page to a responder, you can break up your survey into different sections.
In order to do so, we want to come over here to the sidebar and select the last option, which is add section. This will add a section to the very bottom of the screen. Now, there won't be anything listed there just yet.
We can either start to add our additional questions or we can drag other questions into this section. So in this case,] I'm going to call this just maybe page two or continued, or maybe you want to break up your survey into different themes or different titled components.
Now, I could either hit the plus button and add a new question to this section or what I can do is grab an existing question and drag it into this area. Now when someone opens up this form, all they will see are these first two questions, and then they will see the next button, which will bring them to this next section.
Now, you are not limited by the number of sections which you can create. So I've seen some people actually create a form where there's only one question per section. It can allow the user to really focus in on that question before they start scanning for other options on that page.
You will notice at the bottom of a section there will be a dropdown option. Now, by default, it's going to say, after section one, continue to next section. And in most cases, that's going to be the behavior you want.
But if you have multiple sections, you can send them to a specific section at any time or maybe you want them to submit the form at that time. I'm going to select that preview button once again, and here you can see I'm only given the first two questions.
If I hit next, I will then be brought to page two, and here I have the option to choose my colors. Because I'm in preview mode,
it has saved my selections from last time. Of course, this will not be present when you send it to your users. Now, if you'd like to learn how to use conditional logic where you can send people to a specific section based on their answers, be sure to check out this video where I walk you through the process.
Thank you so much for watching.
And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.
