It's Better Than Twitter, Right?

I’ve been using Google Docs’ excellent forms app for a survey I’m running currently. Their pre-built themes, however, left me wanting. I set out to find a way to embed the survey on my page and style it myself. I originally stumbled on Morning Copy’s article on how to style Google Forms, which worked marvelously. The problem was that I wanted form validation (meaning that I wanted the required fields to actually be required), and the article didn’t directly address this. A little more digging turned up a later Morning Copy article which explained Google Forms and jQuery validation. Bingo.

In the end I decided to skip the validation altogether. It wasn’t totally necessary for the scope of this survey. I found out, though, that leaving questions marked as required in the actual Google Form meant that any required questions left unanswered in the survey would result in the entire questionnaire being omitted from the results spreadsheet. To fix this, I simply went back to the form in Google Docs and removed the requirement. It didn’t require a code change on the actual page - it still appears to the survey participant that the question is required, it just actually isn’t. Google Forms is a great, free replacement for any basic survey software out there. Give it a shot if you’re short on time and money, or if you just really like the integration between Google products.

Just a quick post between bites at Panera, where they’ve rolled out a new loyalty program. When you enroll at the time of purchase, you’re given a keyring card, a wallet card and the option to enroll later online or at a kiosk at the store (which is being manned by one very bored-looking Panera employee as we speak). It’s great that Panera has finally joined the loyalty club card club (is there a card for members of that club?), and the decision to dedicate a team member solely to completing registrations is actually quite smart. Sure they’re paying one person to sit around and punch in info, but his presence is probably increasing actual completions by a significant amount.