Data collection and analysis make up an integral part of any business. In fact, the world that we live in is run by data. Be it customer behavior, or even your business growth, you need data to analyze and find which direction your business is taking. You can then find the best-performing, weak-performing areas along with areas with great potential to take your business through the path of growth. Therefore, it goes without saying that data collection and analysis help companies make decisions, uncover trends and recurring customer behavior and stay up-to-date with their industry developments.
That being said, it is very important to use the right tool to collect and analyze data. The reason being that collecting data and analyzing it systematically is a crucial process. In order to derive the right insights, you need the right tool. Well, there are a myriad of data collection tools and methods like interviews, focus groups, surveys, forms, etc.
However, in this world that’s driven by technology, you need to digitize your data analysis efforts – and the best tool for this would be online forms. In this article, we discuss how you can unlock the power of online forms to analyze data efficiently for your business. Keep reading to find out how.
How Online Forms Can Serve as Reliable Data Analysis Tools?
Today’s online forms come with great built-in capabilities that not only let you collect data but analyze it too. So, for businesses, especially SMEs, forms can be a great way to collect relevant data without having to spend an arm and a leg on data analysis tools. Here’s how you can collect and analyze data using forms:
1.) Create a Form
Sign up with a good online form builder platform and create a form. Add all the relevant questions pertaining to your target audience and create an interactive form that is easy on the eyes. Remember, only user-friendly forms get ample response rates. So, ensure that your forms are responsive, quick, easy to navigate, and elegant enough.
2.) Customize Your Online Form
Ensure that you customize your form and tailor it to meet your business goals. It could be adding your logo, leveraging customizable templates, including images, and links, and adding advanced question types etc. Customizing your form is imperative to give it your company’s look and feel and also align with the company goals. However, many form builder tools only give limited options to customize. So, you may want to select online form builders like Retable that gives ample customization abilities.
3.) Collaborate With Your Teammates
You build forms to collect valuable insights from customers. Therefore, your forms should be engaging and relevant. There should be minimum room for errors. So, it is always best to collaborate with your team members while creating a form or before distributing it. Retable’s online form builder gives you the ability to share permission and roles to your team members for this very purpose. Moreover, after you analyze the insights collected from the online forms, you can easily share it with the team members and collaborate in real-time.
4.) Distribute the Form
Once, the aforementioned steps are done, the next evident step is to distribute the form to your respondents. Now, you can share the form via various popular mediums like social media, email, web links, workspace (for employees), and more. Make sure that you choose a channel that is most frequently used by your audience for increased response rates.
5.) Collect the Responses
Once you distribute the forms, the users can access and respond to them. Your online form builder will then collect the responses and share them with you. When that’s the case, it is best recommended to get an online form builder that will share and let you view the responses in real time. Real-time responses can help you get more clarity about each user’s opinion, analyze the patterns as each response comes in, and make faster decisions.
Being able to view and manage your form responses in a well-designed spreadsheet is very important. When managing your form responses, you should make sure that your form has not undergone any changes. Also, the spreadsheets in which you manage your form responses should help you collaborate with your teammates. Your teammates should be able to work with you on these form responses in line with the authorizations you have given them. For this, it is important to have a well-developed online form tool for organization, team and role management.
Keep in mind that being able to manage these form responses well is just as critical as having a well-designed online form. Being able to manage the data you collect through online forms will make your business operations easier and prevent data loss. Online form builders with intelligent automation features can notify you and your teammates via e-mail when you receive a new form response. So you can get real-time notifications for every form response that matters to you.
6.) Data Analysis
Now, comes the most crucial part – data analysis. Once you collect the responses, online form builder platforms can help you convert these responses and visualize them into charts, graphs, and tables to help you filter, segment, and analyze the data better. When so much is done your decision-making process becomes much easier, efficient, and effective.
For example, if you use the online form feature of an online spreadsheet tool that specializes in data management such as Retable, you can easily group, categorize, sort or format your data views.
You can also create different data views from your form responses such as charts, maps, kanban boards, cards, calendars and more. For example, you can access the smart statistics of your form responses with the chart view, or you can view the location information of your form responses on maps with the map view. If you are trying to follow a certain status or process through forms, the Kanban view will help you. Or, if you are collecting any date information via forms, you can see them in a calendar format with a single click. It is extremely crucial to be able to work with a tool with intelligent data views to gain smart insights from your form responses.
7.) Export the Data or Report
If needed you can also export this data, i.e. the report with collected and analyzed data for offline usage or present it to employees. However, when it comes to sharing with employees and working on the collected data, you can always rely on a tool like Retable, Here, you can visualize the collected data, share the same with the employees without exporting it and collaborate on the platform as a team. By doing so, you can save a lot of time and ideate better without creating any confusion.
Deep Diving into Data Analysis via Online Forms
You can predict your business future by analyzing data and a simple tool like online forms can help you do just that.
Online forms can convert your data into intuitive charts, bar graphs, and line graphs to help you analyze patterns, trends and customer or employee behavior. By doing so you will be able to find the areas that are lacking, the best performing areas, and also find goldmines that have a lot of potential to bring growth to your business. Here are some aspects to look for in your form builder platform:
Data Reports
The form builder you choose should be able to fetch and capture data for you from all the mediums. The data should also be secured with enterprise-grade security since they are the personal responses of your users.
Cross Tabulation
Your form builder should be able to compare and contrast your user responses. The tool should be able to identify patterns and trends so that you can understand the general opinion of your customers or employees.
Data Conversion
The form builder platform that you select should be able to convert the collected data into a visualizable format. It should organize your data effortlessly and get rid of unwanted complexity by seamlessly converting it into charts, graphs, grids, or even into kanban board if needed.
Why Not Try Retable.io?
Retable.io is an excellent form builder tool that helps you create customizable online forms. This online spreadsheet and data management solution cum form builder lets you generate forms and efficiently handle the form data in the table you create via the solution. In short, this online form builder app lets you easily create custom forms and combine them with spreadsheet and data collection processes with the help of a user-friendly interface. And what’s more? Since Retable.io is a no-code platform, you do not have to be tech-savvy or have coding skills to build your forms. Furthermore, you can access real-time insights via Retable.io’s advanced reporting features. You can then analyze insights, visualize the data, and discover trends to make impactful decisions for your business by leveraging the reports.
If you are an SME or growth-stage company trying to get a reliable tool (for team collaboration, ideation, and feedback) at an affordable price, then Retable is the right choice. Retable.io can act as your one-stop solution to build web-based spreadsheets, create online forms and collaborate with your entire team efficiently. It’s like accomplishing two goals with a single action!
