Would you like to collect more detailed information about your users?
In this video, I'm going to show you how to create a form so that you can ask questions and then send them to specific additional questions depending on the choices that they make. This is sometimes called conditional logic or branching, and it's a lot easier than you think. So let's get started.
Adding sections to your form
Here I have a very simple form where I am asking them for their name and their email address, and then I want to know what is their biggest pain point right now.
But depending on which of the three selections they make, I want to send them to ask them further questions about that selection. So in order to do this, we first need to create our additional sections.
Here on the right hand side, you may be familiar with selecting the plus button to add additional questions, but we want to come down all the way to the bottom and select add a section. So here we have section number two.
I'm going to continue to select this two more times because I'm going to have three sections for each of these three answers.
So now we have section two, section three, and section four. At this stage, it's also going to be important that we title each of these sections so we can keep track of where we are sending people depending on their answer here.
So I'm going to title section number two, procrastination. I'm going to come down here, and I'm going to call section number three, email management. And then section number four, we will title this work life balance, just like the questions that I am posing in the very first section.
You're going to see why it's important to label these, maybe not necessarily exactly the same as your question up above,
Send to section based on answer
But so that you can match them together. Now, let's go back to our first question where we are going to branch them off depending on their answer. The very first thing to keep in mind is that there are only two question choices in which we can use this type of logic or this type of branching.
One is multiple choice, the other one is if we wanted to choose a dropdown menu, these are the only two that we can use for this branching.
My personal preference is multiple choice, just because everything is visible, it seems to be a lot easier for people to engage and make their selection with multiple choice.
Now, the very next step is to come down to the more option here, and we want to select go to section based on answer.
I'm going to select that option here. And here you can see we are presented with an additional dropdown beside each of our choices. So beside procrastination, you can see that it is currently set to continue to next section.
Now, that's okay because the next section happens to be the procrastination section. But just to be safe, I'm going to select this dropdown and say exactly where I want it to go.
Section two, and here is the title of that section, And I'm going to do the same for the next two. I want this to go to email management, and if they select work-life balance, I want them to select that as well.
This can be very, very important because we may not be done adding sections, and in fact, once they get to procrastination, maybe I want to branch them out into other subsections, or other areas of my form.
So having these labels and matching them appropriately are very, very important.
Adding additional questions
Next, let's go down to our email management, for example, and add further questions. Remember, at this point, we have no other questions in this area, simply the title.
So I'm going to come up here and let's ask an additional multiple choice question. What email issues are you facing right now? And I've given them three additional options.
This is going to give me so much more valuable information than if I just left my form with this basic question at the beginning. And remember, I could come down here and say, go to section based on answer and continue to branch out.
So for example, when it comes to folder organization, I could create a section where I'm asking them, what type of email client are you using?
How many folders do you currently have at the moment? Go into so much further detail in an effort to find out if I'm the right fit to solving their problem or get them that much closer to a solution. In this case, I am going to turn that off.
You can see that you can toggle that on and off as needed, but this is going to be maybe the last question that I give them. Now for our example, I'm not going to add further questions for section two or for section four.
But what I am going to do is add one more section here below this email management section. And in this case, I'm going to give it the title of email solutions. That's going to be the title of this section.
But maybe here in the description, I could write something like, Hey, I've got a great solution to help you with your email problems. Or maybe something like, I'll be in touch with you shortly so I can help you with your email management.
Something that is personalized based on the fact that they chose the email route or the email path. Now, I'm also doing this to show you a few other things that you want to keep in mind. Number one, the importance of these labels.
Remember this work-life balance used to be section four, but it is now section five of five. But if we go up to our original question here, you can see that we've already kept that connection.
Because we connected it to work-life balance, it doesn't matter how many additional sections we add, it is not going to come out of sync.
Ending your branching form
So that labeling can be very, very important. But you also want to pay special attention as to how you end your form. Here you can see, even if I give them a comforting message to say, I'll be in touch with you shortly to help you with your problems, it's going to continue to the next section.
Yes, you can see that there are options here at the bottom of each of our sections. In this example, I'm going to want to select this dropdown and select submit form.
Meaning when they get to this area, I don't want them to go to any other section, I want them to finish the form at this stage.
And remember, another best practice is whenever you are branching off within your form, you may want to make sure that that particular question is required, just so that they don't end up in some other section if you haven't set these quite correctly.
And don't forget, at any time, I highly recommend that you preview your form and test out some of your scenarios just to make sure that everything is working properly.
So in my example, I want to select that email management option, and it should take us here to these options here, and then to this final email solutions page. Let's see if we've set everything up correctly.
So here is our preview form. I have not made my name or email address required, but I'm going to say my biggest pain point is email management.
I'm going to select next, and perfect, it's brought me to my email management option here. I'm going to say I have not enough time to read my emails. I'm going to select next. And here is that email solutions header.
We didn't actually add the description, but here is either where we could give a comforting message, we can include a link just before they go ahead and submit that form.
So now that you know how to create conditional logic and branching questions within Google Forms, I'd love to hear from you. What other questions do you have about form design or optimizing your Google forms? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Thank you so much for watching. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
