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11 Creative Examples of Website Testimonials

Whether you’re promoting or reviewing a product, service, website, course — or anything on WordPress, testimonials can be a key ingredient to help generate buzz.

A firsthand account of something is a great selling point on why a person should use it. To really make them stand out, consider using creative testimonials that are memorable!

There are so many ways you can be creative with testimonials on a website nowadays, thanks to plugins. So, there’s no need to rely on antiquated full-page layouts of testimonial after testimonial, inconsistently written or designed.

There are many great examples of companies displaying testimonials on their websites in fun, new, and exciting ways. In this article, we’ll take a look at 11 examples of creatively different ways to handle testimonial pages, banners.

11 Creative Testimonial Examples You’ll Want to Implement

Social proof is a must these days. If you want visitors to trust you, then you need to give them solid proof of it. There’s no better way to do that than by showing them what others have to say.

If the rave reviews are starting to roll in about your business and you want a cool way to add them to your site, then check out these testimonial examples for inspiration.

1. Show Your Overall Ratings From Different Trusted Sources

Display ratings from different sources
This is an instant credibility booster.

Showcasing your overall ratings from different trusted review sites like Trustpilot, Reviews.io, G2, Google, Facebook, Yelp, Sitejabber, etc. will instantly boost your credibility.

You can pack even more social proof punch by backing this up with client testimonials sourced from those sites.

Knock’em out with a one-two combination of ratings and testimonials on your site.

On a similar vein…

2. Testimonials with Ratings

99Designs Ratings
Ratings give testimonials added oomph.

Who’s to say that a service can’t be rated the same way a product can?

99Designs happens to have a volume of clients and a particular service that works really well with this format. This makes it much easier for companies or individuals interested in using 99Designs’ services to find out what other people think much more quickly than if they were to take the time to read through dozens of testimonials.

3. Testimonials with a Face to the Name

Fusebox testimonial

If you scroll down a bit on the home page of the Fusebox website, you’ll run into plenty of testimonials you can scroll through.

Fusebox has included photos of each customer and a testimonial that encapsulates the excitement of why they love Fusebox. It’s a great way to show real people that love the product. Putting a face to a positive experience is a win.

4. Testimonials on Instagram

Blue Apron Instagram account.

Blue Apron had taken a smart approach in how they display customer testimonials by currently posting regular testimonials on their social media. Seeing how other customers would love to see what others have been able to cook up using Blue Apron’s services, they’ve compiled customer testimonials and snapshots of the resulting meals from Instagram.

You can use a plugin, such as Social Feed Gallery to help if you’d like to incorporate testimonials on your WordPress site directly from Instagram.

5. Optional Testimonial Highlight Reel

ChowNow highlights.

While each of the customer testimonials on ChowNow’s website is video testimonials, they’ve also gone through and pulled out the strongest quotes from each.

So, if prospective customers want a “highlight reel” of what others are saying, all they have to do is scan through the snippets on the page. It’s similar to the service ChowNow provides to its customers: it’s a quick and very convenient approach.

6. Simple and Straight-to-the-Point Scroller

Fourlane’s homepage scroller.

Fourlane’s scrolling testimonials are straightforward in execution but well done all the same. The scroller appears in the middle of the home page, but it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle since it automatically slides.

7. Video Background Testimonial

Marie Forleo

Now, here is an interesting way to add a video background to your website. Because the Marie Forleo B-School is a video-based training program, it makes sense that they’d rely heavily on video throughout their site.

In the case of their testimonials, they’ve put a video background of the testimonial reel on the B-School page with a quote laid on top. You can then click through to watch the video that compiles all their stories and testimonials into one place.

8. Celebrity Testimonial

Marucci Celeb

Marucci Sports website includes a testimonial from David Ortiz, or “Big Papi” as Red Sox fans know him.

There are other ballplayers throughout the rest of the site, that include video testimonials and articles about why they love Marucci Sports. The only difference is that the text in this one is a celebrity endorsement.

9. Original, Yet Modern Design

Phocas Design’s testimonials.

Phocas’ page of customer testimonials is beautifully designed. There’s the modern masonry layout, the great use of their brand color throughout, and the strategic use of bolded text to call out important snippets from each testimonial.

10. Clean, Consistent Layout

Zapier is consistent.

The Zapier home page includes a short section dedicated to customer testimonials. It’s clean, clear, and consistently designed to make readers think, “Why not stop and read this?”

You can also tell that each quote was carefully trimmed down to really get to the core of each customer’s benefits from the service.

11. Case Study Testimonial Callouts

Zendesk’s callouts.

It’s clear that Zendesk has gone to great lengths to create a comprehensive set of case studies from clients, big and small. It’s actually quite a testament to the quality of their product that they’ve worked with so many well-known brands and helped each of them succeed in their goals.

That said, visitors probably won’t take the time to click through every single one of the dozens of case studies that appear here. What they can do instead is look at the big-name testimonial callouts that are thrown into the mix.

Putting Testimonials to the Test

While each of the examples above paints a variety of creative scenarios worth exploring for your site, they wouldn’t be worth looking at if they didn’t have high-quality testimonials to show off in the first place. So, keep in mind the following tips when you go about gathering testimonials for your freelance business and putting them to the test:

  • There are a variety of ways to get customer testimonials. You can ask for them (by email or survey), listen for them (in calls or correspondence with your clients), or look for them (on social media or review sites).
  • Keep the testimonials short—ideally, no more than four or five sentences.
  • Make sure the testimonials are direct. Sharing someone’s “Well done!” praise is nice but doesn’t really let others know what specifically you did or what the results were that merited such feedback.
  • Include statistics when possible (like if your client reported a 10% lift in traffic after a rebrand).
  • Make them authentic. In other words, feel free to clean up the quote for readability and make it sound like the testimonial came from an actual person (because it did).
  • Include as many descriptors about the client giving the testimonial as possible; at the very least, a name, title, and company. Photos of the client or logos of their company are even better.
  • Consider grouping testimonials based on the service or product they describe. Then place them on related pages.

We’re no longer in a position where we can rely on word-of-mouth marketing to grow our client bases organically.

With everyone flocking to the Internet to see what other people have said about your company, it’d be wise to work on collecting testimonials yourself and publishing them to your WordPress site. This way, prospective customers won’t have to wander around on Google, Yelp, or social media to find out more about your services or merchandise.

Also, consider adding reviews for your site with the help of a theme or plugin. Plus, you can make sure it goes flawlessly to add reviews the right way to your WordPress site.

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8 Top WordPress Appointment and Booking Plugins (2020)

Reservation systems are popular with hospitality-type businesses like hotels and restaurants, but they’re not the only ones who would benefit from them.

Any business model that relies on filling seats, meeting with clients and team members, or conducting assessments would benefit from a reservation, booking, or appointment system.

As a freelancer, you probably schedule time out of your work schedule to talk to your clients or meet with prospective ones. Don’t you think an on-site reservation system would be helpful for your own business, too? Appointments and meetings already take enough time out of your schedule. A reservation system will at least help you shave a few minutes off of the back-and-forth that tends to happen when trying to coordinate and schedule them.

Curious about what a reservation system can do for your WordPress site? Let’s take a look at what sort of businesses would benefit from one, what those benefits are, and then we’ll check out a number of plugins you can use to add a reservation system to your WordPress site.

Who Can Benefit From Booking and Appointments Plugins?

When you think about “making a reservation” you probably think about a restaurant or hotel. And when you think about “booking an appointment”, you’re more likely to think about service providers like physicians and advisors. In the end, though, it’s all the same. You want to give your end-user an easy way to reserve something while minimizing how much interaction you actually have to do to get it done.

So, who is it that really stands to benefit from an appointment or reservation system in WordPress?

  • Developers! (or any WordPress freelancer really)
  • Marketers
  • Restaurants, hotels, and other hospitality providers
  • Travel agencies (e.g. airlines, vehicle rental companies)
  • Beauty, health, and wellness businesses (like salons, gyms, masseuses)
  • Physicians and other healthcare providers
  • Advisors, coaches, and consultants
  • Service professionals (like cable companies that you have to schedule installation services with or pickup and delivery services like Uber)
  • Entertainment (e.g. concert tickets, clowns or bouncy castles for kids’ parties)
  • Education (like scheduling a tour, meeting with an advisor, signing up for classes, etc.)

Some of these industries and professionals have already embraced the online reservation system.

The Benefits for Hospitality

Hospitality providers are probably the most common use case for it right now and theirs is an example many industries would be smart to follow.

  • According to Statistic Brain, 57% of all travel reservations made annually are done online; 65% of which occur on the hotel’s website and not on something like Hotels.com.
  • They also found that 65% of same-day hotel reservations occur on smartphones, so you know that responsive design has been very well-executed on travel sites.
  • Rezdy found that almost 40% of travel-related reservations (those for tours, entertainment, and other activities) are done online each year.

The Benefits for Healthcare

There are other industries starting to pick up the pace on adopting reservation systems, too. Healthcare is likely next in line as the time savings are extremely beneficial for both parties involved in the process of scheduling appointments.

Accenture says that by 2019, almost two-thirds of healthcare systems will give patients the option to self-schedule appointments online. Further, they believe that 64% of those patients will take it.

Then, there’s Patient Pop who surveyed both patients and providers on how they felt about online reservation systems.

  • Over 40% of patients said they preferred to make appointments online.
  • Patients appreciated the greater flexibility and accommodation of being able to schedule their own appointments, too, as 26% of them scheduled same-day or next-day appointments online.
  • Staff, on the other hand, enjoyed the freedom from having to field those appointment requests. They reported that each takes approximately four minutes to schedule.

The Benefits for All

Those may be the more popular examples of businesses reaping the benefits of online reservation systems, but there’s a lot more to be gained from using one. For example:

  • A digital scheduling assistant lends itself to a more professional appearance for your business.
  • Customers appreciate the self-service option.
  • Save time not having to schedule appointments or reservations yourself.
  • Maximize the number of reservations you’re able to take if you enable same-day or next-day bookings.
  • More accurate plan upcoming schedule and availability.
  • Collect all necessary details from the customer before the appointment, so you can prepare ahead of time.
  • You can make more money with upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
  • If you add a pre-payment requirement, you can guarantee that you’ll at least make back money on the time lost to no-shows.
  • Accept reservations 24/7 and make it more convenient for people who don’t have time during the day to make them.
  • You’ll have better predictive capabilities for your business’s sales.
  • Other data available can help you adjust your services or products based on the most popular requests, day and time requests, etc.

The 8 Best Appointment and Booking Plugins

  1. HubSpot
  2. Accuity
  3. Booking Calendar
  4. Restaurant Reservations
  5. Booked
  6. Calendarista
  7. Bookly Pro
  8. HBook

1. HubSpot

Hubspot's free meeting scheduling software for WordPress is used to book appointments.
Use Hubspot’s free meeting scheduling software to book appointments.

HubSpot’s meeting scheduling tool gives you a personalized booking link so you can invite people to view your availability and book time with you. This tool is a part of HubSpot’s WordPress plugin, which also gives you access to other HubSpot tools including HubSpot CRM, so it’s even easier for you to keep track of which contacts are booking meetings with you. When someone schedules a meeting with your personalized HubSpot link, it will automatically be added to your calendar and pushed to the CRM. The meetings tool also integrates with your Google Calendar or Outlook calendar so setting up meetings with customers, prospects, or leads is a painless process.

Details: HubSpot

2. Accuity Scheduling

Acuity Scheduling - WordPress appointment scheduling plugin.
The Acuity Scheduling plugin makes it easy for clients to book and reschedule appointments.

The Acuity Scheduling plugin is a great option if you want to give customers more control over booking appointments and provide yourself with more control over the revenue gained from this tool. Here are some highlights:

  • Integrates with a number of payment portals so you can collect pre-payments.
  • The process of booking, canceling, and rescheduling is entirely in the hands of clients.
  • New customers can be prompted to fill out intake forms before they schedule, saving you time collecting that information during the appointment.
  • Calendars will auto-adjust for different time zones, so you don’t have to worry about people showing up at the wrong time.
  • You can send branded confirmation and reminder messages, so customers keep these appointments top-of-mind.
  • Upsell opportunities abound as you can sell gift cards, memberships, and group class passes.
  • Analytics will calculate the potential earnings from these appointments and will also identify issues with no-shows or repeat cancellations.

To add this to your site, you can either use the API or this plugin.

Details: Accuity

3. Booking Calendar

Booking Calendar reservation plugin for WordPress.
Use the Booking Calendar plugin to display event and service availability and receive bookings on your WordPress site.

When your business needs a quick and easy reservation system for customers, this is a good pick. It’s free, it integrates directly into the WordPress admin, and it works for a variety of scheduling types: events, equipment rentals, meetings, hotel and airline reservations, and more. The best thing about this is how much it simplifies the process of making a reservation. It’s then up to you to set the advanced parameters on the backend.

Details: Booking Calendar

4. Restaurant Reservations

Restaurant Reservations plugin for WordPress
Restaurant Reservations is a free WordPress bookings plugin that lets clients make reservations online for a table at your bar, club, or restaurant.

Similar to accommodation reservations, you’ll need a special WordPress plugin that was tailor-made for accepting restaurant reservations online. This plugin lets you do a whole lot more than just add your reservation form to your website. You’ll be able to email customers directly about their reservations, control bookings based on hours of operation or unexpected closings, accept reservations for multiple locations, and ban abusive customers who frequently fail to show up.

Details: Restaurant Reservations

5. Booked

Booked - Appointment booking plugin for WordPress.
Booked – Appointment booking plugin for WordPress.

This is a nice reservation plugin option for anyone who wants total control over the system but doesn’t want a cumbersome tool that users will struggle with navigating. This plugin simplifies your reservation system into a single calendar widget. Users interact with the calendar, receive information on open slots, and then create their appointments. It’s a very cool system.

Here are some other high points worth noting:

  • Users don’t have to register to make an appointment. Those who do, however, get their own profile page where they can manage everything.
  • You can request appointment pre-payments and set them up to be processed through WooCommerce.
  • Appointment bookings can be managed by individual team members, so you don’t have to hire one person to manage all of your company’s appointments.
  • Calendar colors can be customized using a color picker tool that’s easy to use.

Note: this is a paid plugin.

Details: Booked

6. Calendarista

Calendarista Premium - WP Appointment Booking Plugin and Schedule System
Calendarista is a premium appointment booking plugin and scheduling system for WordPress.

Calendarista is an optimized-for-mobile appointment booking plugin that offers 10 booking modes, a choice of 3 payment gateways with support for WooCommerce, plus a custom form builder, a Google maps feature that lets users calculate departure and destination route distance and cost, a backend calendar for viewing appointments, and a range of flexible optional extras.

The plugin helps to avoid overbooking by allowing you to sync availability with third party systems that can publish and consume iCAL feeds, so your availability is always up-to-date and customers can only book what you have available.

Some of the features of this plugin worth considering include:

  • Set up bookings with a range of date and time options (e.g. single start date, various  date and time ranges, multiple time slots, etc.)
  • Autogenerate time slots.
  • Email notifications.
  • Group bookings.
  • Custom form fields.
  • Calculate pricing by travel distance.
  • Create seasonal rates for day-based bookings
  • A range of color choices to help the plugin blend with your site.
  • And more.

Note: this is a paid plugin.

Details: Calendarista

7. Bookly PRO

Bookly PRO – Appointment Booking and Scheduling Software System for WordPress
Bookly PRO – Appointment Booking and Scheduling Software System for WordPress

Although this booking plugin looks a lot like all the others, I really like the additional features included that show that they’ve actually considered what their users want. So, expect the standard appointment and reservation plugin features, but also be aware that this one includes:

  • A form builder tool that’s fully customizable
  • Bookings can be made for individuals or groups
  • Email and SMS notifications are enabled
  • Schedule flexibility includes time padding, varying appointment durations, days off, and more
  • Customer-facing scheduler looks great and is both responsive and intuitive, complete with easy-to-follow breadcrumb steps.

Note: this is a paid plugin.

Details: Bookly

8. HBook – Hotel Booking System

HBook - Hotel Booking System
HBook – a hotel and accommodation booking plugin for WordPress.

If you’re building out a website for a hotel, motel, or other accommodation rental business, you’ll want a plugin built specifically for taking those types of reservations. HBook enables you to:

  • Add a booking form to your site with a simple shortcode.
  • Add rates tables, list of accommodations and features, as well as an availability calendar with a shortcode.
  • Offer upgrades during the checkout process.
  • Provide a variety of payment options, including deposits or full payments.
  • Accept PayPal, credit cards, or wait for payment on-site.
  • Define pricing based on the number of guests, the season, length of stay, and more.

Note: this is a paid plugin.

Details: HBook

Wrapping Up

Whether it’s for your WordPress site or for your clients’ businesses, the benefits of integrating a reservation system into your website are clear.

Less time and hassle you have to take in scheduling them.

More convenience and flexibility for your customers.

Oh, and don’t forget about the revenue opportunities

Reservation systems remove all that friction so appointments can be a one-and-done kind of thing. Painless, simple, and confirmed.

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How to Email Google Form Notifications to Multiple People

Tara Harris writes - “I have created a Google Form, and when someone fills out the form, I would like that submission to go to myself and 4 other people. Is there a way for me to implement that?”

The Google Forms Email add-on can be used to email form data to one or more people. Install the Forms add-on and create a rule for sending email notifications (video tutorial).

A: Send Email to One or More Recipients

In the Email addresses to Notify field, you can put one or more email addresses of people who should receive the notifications.

Google Forms Email

B: Send Email to the Form Submitter

Suppose you have a question - Email Address - in your Google Form where you ask the submitter to provide their email address. You can put {{Email Address}} in the notify field to send a confirmation email to the person who filled that form.

If your Google Form requires the submitter to login into their Google Account before they can complete the form and you are also collecting email addresses, the field {{Username}} will automatically hold the respondent’s email address. In that case, you can put {{Username}} in the notify emails field to send an auto-response to the submitter.

C: Notify Form Submitter

There’s another easy way to send email notifications to the Form Submitter. Check the Notify Submitter box and select the field in the drop-down where you are asking the respondent to fill their email address.

Notify Google Forms Submitter

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Troubleshoot: Email Notifications for Google Forms

The Google Forms addon lets you set up automatic email notifications when someone submits your Google Form. Internally, when a form is submitted, a trigger is invoked that uses the Gmail API to send email messages on your behalf. The trigger works in real-time and the notifications are sent instantly.

If you are not receiving email notifications, here are some troubleshooting tips.

1. Check your Email Folders

Open your Google Form, submit a test response and then go to the Sent Items folder of your Gmail account. A copy of all email notifications is automatically saved in your Gmail mailbox. Also, check the Spam folder of the recipient’s mailbox. Sometimes an email may get marked as junk due to the message content.

2. Is your Email Quota Over?

Free users can send up to 20 form responses per day while premium users can email up to 400 - 1500 recipients per 24 hours. Google Apps for Work, G Suite and Google Apps for Education users can send up to 1500 email recipients with the premium edition.

The daily email limit is email recipients per day and not email messages per day. Thus if you are emailing a single form response to 2 people, it will reduce your daily quota by 2. Gmail counts every email in the To, CC or BCC field as a separate email (even if they are part of the same message) and thus counts towards your quota.

Google will automatically reset your daily email limit at midnight Pacific Time.

3. Is Gmail Enabled for your Google Apps domain

If you are Google Apps / G Suite user, your domain admin needs to enable the Gmail service for you to send email messages through any of the Google Add-ons. See this link for steps on how to enable the Gmail service for users in your organization.

4. Are you Getting Multiple Email Notifications

It is likely that your Google Form is shared with multiple people. If they too have configured the Email Notifications add-on, the emails will go out from their email account resulting in duplicate emails.

To rectify the issue, open the Google Form, go to add-ons > Email Notifications, Troubleshooting and choose Disable Notifications. You need to do this under the email account that is sending the duplicate email notification.

5. Logged into Multiple Google Accounts

Google Forms add-on may not work if you are logged into multiple Google accounts in the same browser.

If you are unable to add or edit rules inside the Google Forms addon, try logging out of all the other Google Account. Alternatively, open Google Chrome, go to the menu and choose New Incognito Window. Here open the same Google Form and try editing the rule.

6. Cookies are Blocked in your Browser.

The Google Forms add-on requires you to ensure that third-party cookies are not blocked in your browser.

Please see this guide on how to enable cookies.

5. Restart Google Form Notifications

If you have changed your Google account password, or if you have revoked access to the addon under your Google Account settings, or if your Google Apps (G Suite) admin has changed any security settings, you may have to re-authorize the addon to get it working again.

Open the Google Form, go to Add-ons > Email Notifications > Troubleshoot and choose Restart. This will likely resume the notifications when all else has failed.

If the issue is not resolved, please contact technical support.

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Email Notifications for Google Forms – Privacy Policy

The Email Notifications for Google Forms add-on sends email notifications when a new form response is submitted. The first time you install the addon, or when the developer updates the addon, Google may show this authorization dialog requesting access to certain services in your Google account.

Email Notifications for Google Forms

Google Forms Add-on Permissions Explained

Here’s a summary of why the addon requires permissions to various Google Services.  You can also read our privacy policy in detail - the Google Forms add-on does not store, share, or upload your information with anyone else.

Send email on your behalf, Send email as you

The add-on sends email notifications directly from your Gmail account. The add-on does not read, delete or manage your email, it only requires Gmail access to send email on your behalf.

Manage your basic email settings

The add-on lets you send emails on behalf of any email account that is added as an alias to your Gmail account. It requires access to basic email settings to know about the various aliases that are connected to your Gmail account.

View and manage your forms in Google Drive

Email Notifications is a Google Forms add-on and it needs permission to your forms to enable notifications on your behalf, to access the various form fields and the response data for sending inside email messages.

Connect to an external service

The add-on connects to the licensing server to verify your license and enable premium features for paid users. It also connects to IFTTT service to help you mobile notifications when a new form is submitted.

Send email as you

The add-on needs to send emails via your Gmail account.

Allow this application to run when you are not present

The add-on sets up a form submit trigger that sends an email when a new form is submitted. This will happen in the background even while are you logged off.

Display and run third-party web content in prompts and sidebars inside Google applications

All the add-on settings are stored on Google Service using the PropertiesService of Google Apps Script. You can create new rules and modify existing rules from the sidebar that opens up inside Google Forms editor.

Google Forms Notifications – Privacy Policy

Please read our privacy policy.

  • The app will not collect your information only with your consent; it only collects the minimum amount of information that is necessary to operate the add-on.
  • No humans will read any of your data including email messages. If you require technical help, the app may ask you to share your add-on settings with the developer for support.
  • The app will not store your data on non-Google servers. All your settings are stored on Google servers inside the property store of the Google project associated with the addon.
  • The app will not use any of your data for market research, advertising, serving personalized content, retargeting, or recommendations.
  • The App will only use access to Gmail to send emails on your behalf and will not use your data for any other purpose.
  • We will not transfer or share your information with others unless doing so is necessary to provide and improve these features, comply with applicable law, or as part of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

Google sign-in will authenticate your identity and provide you the option to share certain personal information with us such as your email address. The information you provide is held in strict confidence. We collect this information to generate your user license, send payment receipts and communicate with the user about product updates.

If your personal information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may delete or deactivate it by uninstalling our Google add-on or by contacting us. We will respond to your request within 5 business days.

We use other third parties payment processor, such as PayPal, Instamojo, Paddle, WooCommerce, and Stripe, to bill you for services and live chat service to assist you if you have questions while using our website or regarding your order. We neither store nor have access to your credit card details.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us via email at amit@labnol.org.

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How to Send Conditional Emails Based on Google Form Answers

The premium version of the Google Forms Email add-on allow you to set up notification emails that only trigger when one or more conditions are met.

For instance, if you have a Google Form that asks the age of the submitter, you can choose to send a notification to the parent if the age entered is less than 18. If you are using Google Forms for tech support, you can choose to send an email notification to the manager if the customer has picked “high” for the severity level.

Conditional or rule-based notifications in Google Forms can also be used to send an email notification to different people based on answers. For instance, you can set the notifications to go to apple@example.com only if the user has put iPhone or iPad in the product list.

Set up Notification Emails Based on Conditions

In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to set up notification emails that are trigger based on the form response. We would like the notifications to go out if the entered country is India OR if the email address contains ctrlq.org.

google-forms-conditional-emails.gif

Open the Google Form, go to Add-ons > Email Notifications for Forms > Create a new Email Notification. In the Specify Condition screen, choose “Match Any (OR)” since we need to trigger then email when either of the conditions is met.

Next choose “Country” in the “Select Field” drop-down, set the match type as “Equals” and the matching value as India. Similarly, add a condition for “Email Address” and set the match type as “Contains” as shown below.

Save the rule. If either of the conditions is met, the notifications are sent and the form entry is saved. If the conditions are not met, the notification email is skipped while the submitted data is still saved in your form.

Advanced Filters in Google Forms

The Google Forms add-on lets you easily create advanced filters with multiple criteria. Here are some examples.

form-test-conditions.png

For Text Fields

  • Equals - Answer exactly matches the specified text
  • Contains - Text is anywhere inside the answer field
  • Does not contain - Answer does not contain the specified text
  • Any of - Specify a list of values (comma separated) and the answer should be one of these values
  • None of - Answer should not equal to any item in the list (comma separated)
  • Is Empty - The answer is blank
  • Is Not Empty - The answer contains at least one character (not blank)

For Numeric Fields

  • Equal to - Answer matches the specified numeric value
  • Not Equal to - Answer doesn’t match the number
  • Greater than - Answer is greater or equal to number
  • Less than - Answer is less or equal to number

Tip: If you would like to check if an answer is between two numbers, create two conditions for the same field - greater than the lower limit and lower than the upper limit.

Regular Expressions

Advanced users may apply regular expressions to match answers against patterns. For instance, if you would like to send email notifications only when the city field contains exactly 4 characters, the regex value would be ^.{4}$ (case insensitive by default). A regex like (iPad|iPhone|Mac|Macbook) would match any Apple product.

Match all conditions or any

match-conditions.png

When setting up conditional notifications in Google Forms, you can also specify if the emails should be triggered only when all conditions are met or when either of the conditions is true.

Choose “Match any” for OR or “Match all” for AND (evaluate all conditions).

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How to Resend Email Notifications to Google Form Respondents

Google Forms have a daily sending limit for email notifications. If you have too many people responding to your Google Form in a 24 hour period, the daily quota may be exceeded and no email may go out to the new form respondents.

If emails were not sent to any of the form respondents, you can manually trigger the email notifications inside the Google Forms add-on. This is available with the premium version.

Manually Respond to Form Responses

Before you trigger emails, go to your Gmail sent items and confirm that emails have not been sent to a particular form respondent else you may end up sending a duplicate email to the same person.

Then open the Google Form, go to the addons menu, choose troubleshoot and here you’ll see an option to resend email notifications.

resend-email-notifications.png

Click the “Resend Notifications” button and you’ll get a list of all form responses received in the reverse chronological order (newest listed at the top).

You can click “View Response” to check the original responses while the “Send Email” button will actually trigger the instant email notification.

send-email-to-form.png

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How to Set up Respondent Email Notifications with Google Forms

With Google Forms notifications, you can send an automatic email notification to the form respondent as soon as they submit your Google Form. You can create a pre-written autoresponder email type and the submitter will get will the reply almost instantly.

You can include a copy of the form data in the autoresponder email along with a PDF copy of the form responses.

Here’s how you can configure the Google Forms addon to send autoresponder emails to the person who fills your Google Form.

Open the Google Form, go to Addons > Email Notifications > Create Email Notification. Turn on the option “Notify Form Submitter” and then, from the dropdown, select the recipient’s email field where you would like to send the email notification.

Setting Up an Autoresponder Email

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For instance, if you have a form that asks for the recipients’ email address under the question, What is your email address, you would need to select exactly this form question in the drop-down.

Alternatively, you can put the recipient’s email question in the ”Email Addresses to Notify” input field by enclosing the field inside double curly braces. In our previous example, the field would have amit@labnol.org, {{Submitter Email Address}}

On the next screen, you can enter the email subject and body of the email.

If you would like to set up separate email notifications for the form owner and the form respondent, you can create two separate email notifications.

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How to Change the Reply-To Email Address in Google Form Notifications

The Reply-To email address is the address where the emails go when someone replies to your email notification generated by the Google Forms addon.

By default, the reply to address is set the email address of the form owner so all replies to form notifications emails are sent to them. You can, however, use any other email address in the reply to field.

How to Set Reply To Email in Google Forms

Go to the Google Forms, choose Add-ons and then Email Notifications. You can either create a new email notification rule or edit an existing notification.

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In the notifications editor, type the email address in the reply to field where you would like the replies to go. You should include only a single email address and it must be a valid email.

Send Replies to Form Respondent

Change the reply to address to go to the form submitter’s email

It is also possible to have the form submitter’s email address in the reply to field. This is useful because you can respond to the form submitter by simply replying to the notification email without having to manually change the email in the To: box.

To edit the reply-to email address and set it to the respondent’s email address, edit the notification and put the {{Email Question}} in the reply to field. For instance, if your form question is “Your email”, you should put {{Your email}} in the reply-to field and.

The template variable in double curly braces will be replaced with the actual email address filled by the user when they were submitting the form. Please note that you can only have a single email address in the Reply-To field.

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How to Customize Email Messages Sent by Google Forms

When a visitor submits your Google Form, you can automatically send them a confirmation email and also send an email to the form owner letting them know that a new form response has been received.

The email notifications send through Google Forms can be easily customized using HTML tags. Similar to Gmail Mail Merge, you can also include dynamic form data in your email messages using the double curly braces notation.

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If you enclose a question title inside double curly braces, it becomes a variable field. The add-on, at the time of sending the email, will replace all such variable fields using corresponding answers from the form response.

Dynamic form fields can be included in the email subject, the body of the confirmation email and also the PDF file name. You can either add the variables manually or click the “+Add” drop-down menu to quickly access all the variables that are available for your form.

In addition to question titles, the following variables are available:

  • {{All Answers}} - Include all non-blank answers in the email, formatted as a table.
  • {{Response Date}} - The date and time of form submission
  • {{Response Id}}  - A unique id of the form entry
  • {{Response Number}} - Inserts the entry number of the form response
  • {{Response Url}} - Secret link to edit the current form submission

Please note that tracking details like browser name or IP address of the person who filled out the form cannot be captured as Google Forms does not provide this data via the API.

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The form notification email is written in HTML and thus can be formatted using any HTML tags. For instance, if you use Dear {{Full Name}} in the body, the name will be italicized in the actual email. Similarly enclosing any text or variable field inside tag will make it bold.

How to Include Logos and Images in Form Emails

If you would like to include your brand logo image in the form email, go to image hosting service and upload the image. Next copy-paste the tag anywhere in the email body.

You can also use HTML Mail to generate beautiful emails.

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How to Change the Sender’s Name in Google Forms Email Notifications

The Email Notifications for Google Forms add-on sends an email when someone fills and submits your Google Form. The sender’s name, that shows up in the message header, is by default the name of the form’s owner.

The sender’s email is always that of the Google account that has installed and authorized the Google Forms add-on. Some may want to change the email in the notification so that the notification appears to come from the form submitter’s email account but that is not possible since you cannot spoof someone else’s address.

You can, however, change the sender’s name in the Forms notification. This can be a dynamic field so if you are asking for the user’s name in the Google Form, that name may show up in the email’s To field.

While creating the rule, go to the Sender’s Name field in the configuration window and enter the question that is asking for the submitter’s name and enclose this in double braces (see screenshot).

Change Sender in Google Forms

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How to Change the Date and Time Format in Google Forms Email Notifications

Google Forms support both the date and time fields. The time component and year component can be added/hidden inside the date field based on requirements.

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The date and time fields in email notifications can be reformatted so that they are confirmed to your locale/region and are easy to understand. For instance, you could US users may prefer mm/dd/yyyy format while Europe (UK) users may prefer dd/mm/yyyy format.

Reformat Date & Time in Google Forms

To reformat date and times in Google Forms, go to the add-ons menu, choose Email Notifications for Google Forms > Manage Form Settings. Here choose “Edit Format” under “Reformat Date & Time” section.

You can now change the default timezone of your Google Form and also specify the exact date and time format that should be used for outputting date and time type questions in email notifications.

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Google Forms use the Oracle date and time patters for formatting and parsing dates. Here are some sample formats and the corresponding outut.

Date FormatSample Output
yyyy-MM-d hh:mm a2016-11-28 06:30 PM
yyyy-MMM-d HH:mm:ss2016-Nov-28 18:30:22
EEE, d MMM yyyyWed, 4 Jul 2016
yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss2016/11/29 12:08:56

“M” represents the month in year. If you say “MM”, it is interpreted as the month number while “MMM” will display the month’s short name. You can say “MMMM” to output the full name of the month.

Similarly, “E” is day name of the week while “a” is the AM / PM marker. You can check the date time formats documentation.

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How to Turn Off Email Notifications in Google Forms

This step by step tutorial explains how you can disable or temporarily turn off email notifications in Google Forms.

Step 1: Open the Google Form, go to the Addons menu and choose Email Notifications.

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2. Choose Troubleshooting / Tech support menu.

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Step 3: Click Disable Notifications and you’ll see a popup confirming that the notifications have been turned off.

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If you would you like to resume/restart email notifications for forms, choose the restart option in the same screen.

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How to Email Google Form Responses to Multiple People

With Google Forms Email Notifications, you can send an automatic email to one or more people when a new form response is received.

To get started, open the Google Form, go to Add-ons > Email Notifications for Forms > Create Email Notification. Here, inside the Email Addresses to Notify box, you can enter one or more email addresses separated by a comma.

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You can also put {{form questions}} that ask for the user’s email address and they’ll be dynamically substituted with the actual email address entered by the user.

For instance, if your Google Form has a question titled “Your Email Address”, you can put {{Your email address}} in the Email Address to Notify field and the notification will be sent to the actual email address entered by the user of Google Forms.

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How Google Search Works in 2016

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The below image has a somewhat small font size on it. You can see the full sized version by clicking here.

Many years ago we created an infographic about how search works, from the perspective of a content creator, starting with their content & following it through the indexing & ranking process.

As users have shifted to mobile devices, the limited screen size of the devices have pushed search engines to squeeze out & displace publishers with their own self-hosted information in an effort to offset the poor usability offered by tiny devices, while ensuring the search habit does not decline.

The philosophy of modern search has thus moved away from starting with information and connecting it to an audience, to starting with the user and customizing the result page to them.

“The biggest three challenges for us still will be mobile, mobile, mobile” – Google’s Amit Singhal

How Do Search Engines Work?

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How to CC or BCC Multiple Email Recipients with Gmail Merge

Let’s say you are sending out a personalized mass email using Mail Merge for Gmail but would still like to add certain recipients in the CC or BCC list.

If you would like to include the same recipient in the CC or BCC field for all merged email, go to the Add-ons menu in your Google Spreadsheet, choose Mail Merge with Attachments, Configure and put the emails in the CC or BCC input box as shown in the following screenshot.

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How to CC / BCC Different People in Mail Merge

If you would like to use different CC or BCC email addresses for each recipient of Merge, here’s how to do it.

Open your Mail Merge sheet and create two additional columns. Set the header title of these columns as CC and BCC respectively. Now you can include one or more email addresses under these columns and they’ll be CCed or BCCed automatically during the merge.

bcc-merge.png Create new columns, CC & BCC, and include one or more emails (comma separated)

CC / BCC - Things to Know

Please note that Gmail counts every CC or BCC as a separate email and thus they would be counted against your mail merge quota. If you send 2 emails and each email has 1 recipient in the CC box, your effective merge quota will be reduced by 4 (2 + 2).

Also, it is not required to include yourself in the BCC list since mail merge stores all sent emails in your Gmail Sent items folder.

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How to Send Emails to Only Specific Rows of a Google Sheet with Mail Merge

The Mail Merge spreadsheet contains a mandatory column called Mail Merge Status that indicates the sending/scheduling status of merge for the recipient of that particular row.

For instance, the mail merge status column of value “Mail Sent” indicates that the email has already been sent to the recipient in that row. If you run Mail Merge again, the row will be skipped and the email will not go out to recipients mentioned in that row.

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Rows #4 and #5 will not be included in Mail Merge since the Mail Status column for these rows was manually set to SKIP

Mail Merge status column can have 5 values:

  1. Email Sent - The messages has been sent and this row will not be included in future merge until you clear the cell value.
  2. Email Scheduled - The message is queued for future delivery. The status will auto change to Email Sent after the scheduled message is delivered.
  3. Draft Created - If you are using Mail Merge to create drafts in Gmail, this status indicates that the draft has been created in Gmail for that recipient.
  4. Quota Over - This indicates that you have run out of your daily email sending limit, new emails won’t be sent but you can still schedule messages.
  5. Error Message - If merge encountered an error, maybe the email address was not valid, the status column will show the full error message.

How to Skip Sending Mails to Specific Rows

Let’s say you have a Google Spreadsheet with a dozen entries but you would only like to include, say, 5 rows in Mail Merge and skip the other rows.

You can easily do this by manually setting the Mail Merge Status column as SKIP for rows that you would not like to be included in the merge.

Also, rows with status as “Email Sent” will also not included in the merges.

Use Google Sheets Filters to Hide Rows

Mail Merge for Gmail will only send emails to rows that are visible (not hidden) in your Google Sheet. If you are using Filters inside Google Sheets to hide rows that don’t meet a certain criteria, the emails will not be sent to the hidden rows.

Say you have a Google Sheet with hundreds of rows and the column titles are Name, Country, Age and Email Address. You would only like to send emails to rows where the Country is United States and Age > 18 years.

All you have to do is create a filter inside Google Spreadsheet with the specified criteria and all the unmatched rows will be hidden. Mail merge will automatically skip the rows hidden by the Google Sheets filter.

Step 1: Select the Data Range, go to Data and Choose Filter.

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Step 2: Click the Dropdown next to the column name and specify the criteria.

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You can either Filter by Values (show rows that have United States as value) or Filter by Contain (show rows where the age > 18).

Google Sheets will now display rows that match your filter criteria and when you run Mail Merge, it will only email visible rows provided the corresponding Mail Merge Status column is blank.