Looking for an online form builder to move your paper forms into the digital space? Or perhaps you’ve had enough of trying to explain how to fill out PDF forms to your clients? Maybe you just need an online form builder that is quick, easy, and still looks professional for your brand? Well, do I have the solution for you!
If you use forms - paper or digital - you will want to hear about Paperform. This online form builder will save you time and empower you to create professional, branded forms for nearly any purpose you can think of!
No more messing around with printers or trying to figure out how to fill in a PDF form online when you or your clients don't have the right software. In the video below I’ll show you just how easy Paperform is and how you might be able to use it in your business.
Watch here:
For those who prefer to read, below is the transcript of the video:
Are you using heaps of forms in your business, like written paper work forms that you've got to fill out and scan, or PDFs that some people can fill out online and others can't? There's a better way. Let's have a look!
Hi, I'm Nerin from Positively Sorted. We help small businesses to outsource the tricky admin and marketing tasks so that they can get on with the stuff that they love and that they are really good at.
I want to talk today about an app that I've been using more and more to build online forms. Online forms can replace paperwork that you've got to write out by hand and then scan in somehow. Or PDFs that some people can and some people can't fill out on their computer.
An online form can save you, your clients and your staff heaps of time, but they also make you look more professional. You can set them up to be fully branded with your logo and your colours, so that you look next level!
You might've heard of or used Google Forms, or there's another one called Typeform that's pretty popular, and there's a few others. The online form builder that I use is called Paperform.
Just a few of the reasons Paperform is the best online form builder are:
It's super easy to use,
It has a lot of customisation options for setting up your branding and making it look just like your website and your business,
It has a lot of integrations and you can do some quite fancy stuff with it.
Some of the really clever stuff you can do is:
Set up questions that are conditional on the answers to previous questions.
There's all the different sorts of multiple choice.
You can set up scales like, “What's your satisfaction on this, on a scale of one to…” whatever you want.
You can set up scoring, so depending on the answers to some of those questions, you can give a score at the bottom.
You can take payments if you set up the connection with PayPal or Stripe.
I have a client that we use Paperform for a lot, that has a lot of forms. A lot of them are more for record keeping and making sure staff are following policies, and collecting the right information and looking after clients well.
But we've also used it for setting up a registration page for a workshop that she's going to be giving, including taking the payment. You can use it as a full booking page.
The other thing that Paperform does that I'm not sure if the others do, is it lets you customise the PDF result that comes out at the end. A lot of the time you might just need the actual data and you might want to send it to a spreadsheet or into your accounting software or some other app. But sometimes you need that output as an actual document to keep for record keeping or legal reasons. With Paperform you can set up the PDF that comes out of that with, for example, all the terms and conditions and the person's signature, and your logo at the top. Paperform really does a really great job of that.
So let's jump in and have a quick look around and I'll show you what I mean. (skip to 4:18 in the vid if you want to see).
So this is Paperform. This is the dashboard when you log in behind the scenes.
Templates and Ideas for uses
You can see they have a lot of templates that you can use as a starting point or you can just create a blank form but this gives you an idea as well of all the things you can do with it. You can do, for example:
Invitations
Registrations
Quizzes
Sign up forms - get people to sign up for your waiting list
Quotes
Feedback forms
Questionnaires and surveys
Service agreements
Polls
Application forms
all sorts of stuff!
I actually haven't used Paperform as much in my business as yet, mostly within my clients own businesses. I'm just getting some extra forms set up now for Positively Sorted. Feedback forms and testimonial questionnaires are some of the things I've probably used it the most for. I did have a little quiz I've got.
Folders for Organisation
You've got folders that you can set up on the side, if you've got lots of forms. The client that I'm currently working with using Paperform online form builder, we've set her up with her own account and she's has folders all down the side here for her. HR forms and workplace health and safety, intake forms, forms that they use with clients, all sorts of stuff.
The other thing I've used it for is an actual order form. So you can set up products you can get the user to put in their store details and then select what products they want to order. That's a good one as well to take some of the data entry work out!
Easy adding questions and text
If we go into edit, you can add text anywhere, move things around. Anywhere where you put your cursor, you can add an image, video, a break, which will usually make it another page, and then you can add your questions. The questions don't stand out heaps and that's part of why I like it, that the questions are neat and tidy.
Setting up your Branding
Up the top here you can set up your theming. Your colours and fonts for your headings, the sizes, the colours for your questions and your buttons and everything. It's all customisable to exactly what's going to suit your brand. Then you've got options to set up the configure section. You have your title, your description, you can have an image sort of the thumbnail. Then you can also customise the URL so that it's something that makes a bit more sense, is a bit more easier to read. It defaults to a jumble of letters and numbers and then you can set it up to something that's going to suit you.
What you can do with the data
You can set your form up to be able to take payments, or to see how many people have used your form and how they've used it. Then you can also set up things like scoring. You can set up a page or pages for after they've submitted the information, what comes up on the screen that they see.
You can set up emails too, so that when they fill out the form, you can set where that information automatically goes. You can set it so you get a summary of the submission, and if it's something like a simple inquiry form, that might be all you need. But if it's something a bit more elaborate, you might want an email to go to the person that filled it out with a "thanks for filling out this form, here's the next step" email message. There could be another email that might go to your admin saying "this person's filled in this form, this is what you need to do next with it next". Completely customisable!
Then there's also custom PDFs that you can set up. You can choose how the results get sent in these emails as well. So custom PDFs let you set up your themes and everything again. Then you can either just put your logo at the top and a heading and then just show all the results. Or you could go a bit more custom and pick and choose which answers and put text in between and really format it exactly how you want, depending on what you want to do with it.
Next, there are the integration hooks.
This is where you can get really clever! With integrations you could have the information that gets put into the form automatically added to your email list or into a spreadsheet. You can have it add a task in Asana or into your CRM. These are the direct integrations and then you can use Zapier. Zapier will let you set up integrations with even more apps! It's really only up to your imagination on what you can do with the information. Integrations are where you can start to automate things a bit more to save you even more time.
Sharing the form to be completed
To actually use the form you can embed it in your website using the generated code. Paperform will give you a bit of code that you can put into your website. Or the easiest way is that URL that we looked at before, copy that, and you can either just share it somewhere or just give that link to whoever needs it. You can put it in an email to somebody, in a message to somebody, you can have it on your website, like a button that links to that URL. It's limitless!
So that's a quick taster of what you can do with my best online form builder, Paperform. There you go!
What do you reckon? It's super flexible and has heaps of options - that was just a little taste. If you've got forms or ideas for forms, or maybe you have been thinking "oh I've been meaning to do that but I have never gotten around to it!", check Paperform out.
We can set up your forms for you
It is pretty easy to use but if it looks a bit tricky to you or if you just don't have time, get in touch with us! Creating online forms with Paperform is something we've been doing a lot of lately and we're getting it down to a fine art.
I'd love to hear from you
Do you have any questions about Paperform you would like to ask? Or have you used it already and how have you utilised it? Do you have some great ideas for some forms after watching this video? Let me know in the comments below!
