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Limited conditional questions and branching options are some of the primary complaints users have about Google Forms. They aren’t wholly absent features, they’re just unintuitive and tedious. There are a few ways to improve the experience and make better dynamic Google Forms, though.
Let’s take a quick look at some tips for streamlining response validation and mapping conditional branches in Google Forms.
Create better conditional questions in Google Forms
For many service-oriented businesses, a Gmail address is enough to disqualify a marketing lead. So, say you want to add some logic to your form to require professional emails. In Google Forms, this is called Response validation, and it only works with Checkbox, Short answer, and Paragraph question types.
To limit the type of emails that can be submitted to your form, click the three vertical dots in the bottom right corner of the question box and select Response validation. That will reveal a few columns for defining your rule. If you choose Text from the leftmost column, you’ll see there’s an option for Email. This will only let users submit a value formatted as any email address. That’s not what you want so we need to go back and choose Regular expression from the first column.
With a regular expression, you can create very specific rules for what is and isn’t acceptable. You could use a regex cheat sheet to write your own, but it’s a pain, even for people who use them frequently. An easier option is to ask an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Bard to create a regex pattern for you.
Once you have your regex pattern, back in Google Forms, pick Matches from the middle Response validation dropdown option, and paste your expression into the Pattern field. Then, specify an error message for any submissions that include @gmail.com. That’s a roundabout way to prevent unqualified leads from filling out your form, but it’s not the only kind of logic you can create in Google Forms.
Let’s say that below your email question, you have a multiple-choice field that asks leads to provide their budget for your service. You have different follow-up questions based on whether a lead can afford a $5,000 commitment or a $50,000 commitment, so you want to create some if/then logic. In Fillout, you can set this up on a per-question basis, showing or hiding individual questions when basic conditions are met. In Google Forms, it’s not that easy.
The only way to show form submitters different questions based on earlier responses is to break your Google Form into multiple sections, with a Multiple choice or Dropdown question with logic where each choice leads to a different section. Click the three vertical dots at the bottom of the question window and click Go to section based on answer. Then, if your budget question has four answer choices, you’d create four new sections and have each answer lead to the corresponding section with follow-up questions tailored to the associated budget choice.
There’s no conditional branching visualization in Google Forms. Each section appears one after the other in a vertical list. Assuming choice number four leads to section number five, you have to scroll down until you find it. It sounds straightforward, but things can get messy with just two conditional multiple-choice questions. To avoid confusion:
- Map out all of the possible branches in a spreadsheet in advance
- Name every conditional section based on the answer that leads to it
- Never use the Continue to next section option (since it will not update dynamically if you reorder the sections)
When you absolutely have to use Google Forms, and you need to incorporate lots of conditional branching, it’s almost worth breaking things down into separate surveys. We’ve even heard of people using ChatGPT to write Google Apps Scripts that automatically create personalized follow-up forms based on responses to an earlier form.
A better option is to use another form app when you need detailed, conditional forms and surveys. As a free Google Forms alternative, Fillout generates dynamic flow charts that show every possible branch in form logic. So when one answer sends users to page three, and another choice sends them to page thirteen, you have a visual representation of both journeys.
Fillout also lets you show or hide individual fields with conditional logic. Say you want to quickly screen out respondents with Gmail addresses in your form. Select the field you want to hide, add the Show when option under logic, and set which field Fillout should watch and if you want the field to contain or not contain the text you specify. Fillout’s logic can fetch data from Airtable and Notion databases to build detailed filters based on your business data, along with what the respondent entered.
Move your Google Forms to Fillout for more advanced, user-friendly conditional logic
Already built your form in Google Forms but want to add more logic features to save your respondents’ time and get cleaner data responses? Fillout’s Google Form importer lets you upgrade your Google Forms to support logic-driven questions and more in seconds.
Connect your Google account, select your Google Form, choose a theme, then moments later all of your form fields and details will be copied over from Google Forms into a new Fillout form. There, you can add conditional logic to show or hide fields based on prior responses, build validation logic to ensure the right data is entered, and show or hide form pages as needed. With Fillout’s integrations, you can even use Zapier or Make automated workflows to save your form responses to different apps or send customized followup messages based on responses.
And with 1,000 responses per month for free, Fillout is perfect for gathering data even from your most demanding campaigns.
Written by
Ryan Farley is a writer and co-founder of Pith and Pip. He lives in Bangkok, Thailand where he previously managed the editorial team of a web marketing agency.
