There are a lot of things to love about Typeform that are automated inside the tool but there are still some best practices that everyone should follow when they start creating forms.

Today I am covering 3 simple things that I have learned - they are pretty “old-school” techniques - but I remember a time before computers on the desktop.

1. Plan out your quiz on paper first - ok, make that in a Word document or a spreadsheet - so that you have the sequence of your questions and logic all worked out in advance.

This includes ‘decision trees’ and branching that you will use to create your logic rules. For example, if someone chooses Yes to this question they go to the question over here. If they choose No, they go there.

Make sure you lay out any calculations you want to have inside the form spelled out as simply as possible. Include lines pointing to questions where the inputs to the calculations come from (pardon my poor grammar here). All of this is going to help you once you are inside Typeform working away.

2. Use workspaces liberally. For each project, I create a separate workspace to contain all the various versions of the typeform that I am creating. While Typeform doesn’t have ‘folders’, the workspaces are a close proxy.

I also create a ‘project x backups’ folder for each project. I always always always make a copy of any published typeform in the project’s backup folder. I lost a number of files in my early days of creating forms cuz I made changes to a form without having a backup to go back to… Just sayin’ it’s good to know there is a backup in case.

I also make a duplicate of any file that is published and out there in the public domain. Any changes I make to improve the form, I do with the duplicate so that I can test it out BEFORE it is published. This leaves the current working version safe and running.

3. Use the Google Sheets integration with every form.

I know this assumes you have a Google account or gmail. But honestly, using Sheets to capture all the submitted form data - in addition to the data store inside Typeform - gives me some peace of mind. All the form data is captured and I have a backup.

I also do a lot of calculations and other things inside Google Sheets, including merging the data with an output template to create a PDF file to send to the respondent. In a number of cases, I have forms that people repeat every four months and I want to be able to show period over period comparisons to them in reports/graphs. I need the data in the spreadsheet to be able to do that on a semi-automated basis.

It also helps in me in cases where I want to filter out repeated form completions by the same person. This is not really possible in native Typeform - you can’t check if someone has already filled out the form. But with the data in Google Sheets, I can sort and filter out duplicate data entries.

Ok… so those three things are pretty basic. Common sense you might say. But implementing them and making them a habit will save you time and frustration in the long run.

I would be interested to know if you have implemented any of these in your Typeform-ing. Or if you have any other suggestions that folks could follow as best practices when they are creating and maintaining their typeforms.

Leave a comment below and let me know.

If we use a ‘scoring quiz’, we can create variables to act as tags and replace the values with the details we want to send to our CRM or ESP. But how can you do that using an Outcome quiz?

In the Outcome quiz, you can’t set up a variable and populate it with a value. BUT you can assign a tag to the results manually. Let’s examine this with an outcome quiz I created regarding the scenario “Is your website a lead generating machine?”.

I have three endings in this quiz.

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Each ending has a separate call to action:

• A will offer the users the opportunity to get some help building out their typeforms
• B offers the user to connect to a partner organization of mine to have a free analysis done on the website
• C provides a cheat sheet of information and actions the user can take on their website (upgrades typically required before having the analysis done in B or getting a custom typeform built)

What I really want to do is ‘tag’ the respondents and get that information into my CRM/ESP for follow up sequences, contacting them, etc.

But how can I do this with the Outcome quiz results?

I've created a Google Doc with all the details in it - it's over 15 pages long, too long to put in this email. Here's the link to the doc.

Inside the Google Doc, at the end, there is a link to a video walkthrough of the steps. Hope you enjoy it as well.

If you have any difficulty in getting access to the document, leave a comment below and let me know.

Folks seem to wrestle with when they are looking at the ‘performance’ of their typeforms: “How should I analyze my results?”

You can ‘see’ and access some data/information about the results of your typeform but there are some limitations too. When you dive into the Results menu tab you can:

• look at the Insights about your form,
• see Summary details about each question and create a report for viewing online or printing out
• look at the details of each response and download or delete all or some of them

One thing that is hard to do is to create 'snap shots' of the Insights - views and drop-offs at each question - on a periodic basis. How do you know if changes to the wording of a question reduces the drop-off rate over the time period since the update? Or on a month by month basis?

I've  put together a bit of a review of the tabs available under the Results menu and provided a little tip/technique I use to monitor the Insights to typeforms.  I've put the details in this Google Doc. You'll see the steps I take to set up the ability to track Insights data month over month.

This was also emailed out to the subscribers to the Newsletter (hint hint) - sign up over there (-->) on the right and get stuff like this in your inbox every Monday morning.

Just a thought. Hope you find it useful.

des

If you are new to Typeform or looking to 'do more' with the Follow-ups feature, did you know that you can set up your follow-ups to based on 'conditions'? 

Let's look at a couple of use cases where you might want to send 'different follow-up/notification' emails to users. Keep in mind that even if you 'redirect' the user to a specific URL, based on the outcome, you may still want to send them related information in a follow-up.

• You want to send them an email based on the recommended product outcome in your quiz - with a brief description and a link to the product page.
• Based on the score they achieved in your quiz - a personality quiz, you might want to send the user more details on the archetype and a link to services you provide.
• For lead generation purposes, send an email to the product specialist associated with the product selected by the user if they are considering purchasing the product in the next 4-6 weeks.

In each of these cases, you can 'customize' the follow-up based on conditions! This is such a neat and useful feature that many users are NOT leveraging to the max.

I've put the details in this Google Doc. You'll see the steps to take and there is even a link to short video on how I set up a quick demo form.

This was also emailed out to the subscribers to the Newsletter (hint hint) - sign up over there (-->) on the right and get stuff like this in your inbox every Monday morning.

Just a thought. Hope you find it useful.

des

I’m an old dawg and have learned a few new tricks. Including Typeform.

For my business I invested heavily in Typeform knowledge and skills. I also wanted to get a lot better at writing. More content and higher quality.

One of the things I invested in this year was a 30 Day Writing Challenge. This was to improve my email copy writing. I wanted better follow-up sequences to my quizzes and assessments. It has turned into writing email copy for clients as well.

(give me 30 seconds more and I will connect writing to Typeform … honest)

The challenge (from Ian Stanley, email marketer and coach/mentor) was an email drip course. It sent out a daily email with a writing prompt. Set the timer for 25 minutes and write 500 words on that topic. Done.

Loved it.

(If you are interested in Ian’s course let me know. I’ll hook you up. It’s really good.)

But what to do when it was over? I had a habit. I wanted to keep going. It was a struggle to come up with a daily topic for me to write. But I managed for 120 straight days. Then the lightbulb went off.

(here’s the connection to Typeform)

I created a small typeform for me to use. 2 questions. Pick a topic from a drop down list. Then write in a long-text question and submit. Simple. Done.

I started by creating my own 30-day list of topics. Then I did a 60-, 90- and 130-day version. I put a ‘close after’ limit on the form just for fun.

I am 25 days into the 130-day version right now. I created a repeating daily meeting with myself at 8:30 in the morning. The link to the form is in the calendar invite. All I do is see the notification, hit the link and write.

I also connected the typeform to a Google Sheet. That way I could merge the form data into a Google Doc. Convert it to pdf and mail it to myself. Just for a record. That’s done automatically with Document Studio. I will be posting about that tool here for data reports.

For me that works. It gets me writing every day.

If you want to check out the typeform, click the link below.

>>>Get better at writing!​

Go ahead and try it out. Not a problem. (just don’t write abusive stuff please). Note that it won’t send you an email version of what you wrote in this sample.

Let me know what you think. Is this something you could use to ‘write more’?

Pro tip: check out Hemingway Editor. It’s a free tool that will grade your writing level. If you are writing email copy, aim for Grade 6 or lower. It will offer suggestions to improve the content. This post was graded at a Grade 2 level of readability.

des