So, you’ve started a small business, whether you’re doing some personal coaching, dog walking or selling custom pottery. Maybe you’ve already lined up a few customers or clients, and largely have done your business via Venmo with your small clientele. But as you’re growing—or preparing to grow—maybe you’ve started to wonder if you need a webshop. Perhaps you’ve looked at Shopify, Etsy, Gumroad or WordPress, but the idea of building an entire website or surrendering 10 or more percent of your profit in fees seems like too much work or money for the business you’re pulling in.
Still, an online presence seems important—even if most of your business is done IRL, having an online purchase option can boost your business in surprising ways. And if you’re looking for a simple page where you can share basic information and images about your business and your offerings, collect client/customer information and orders, take payments and track your orders, a Google Form with the Payable Add-On can streamline your business and have you online in minutes with a simple, clean storefront.
As Forbes magazine pointed out, a business without a website can seem suspect. Having a simple page via Google Forms not only can bring you online traffic, it can make IRL customers feel more at ease as well.
Thousands of small business owners use Google Forms for everything from sports team registration to online consulting to event registration to selling homemade muffins. (You can learn more about a few of our favorite businesses in our blog interviews here!)
We make it easy for business owners to get started, with dozens of free Form templates that are designed for different business needs, from small-batch wood crafting to personal training to event registration to photo/videographer services. No matter what you’re selling, we can make it simple.
The best part? The Payable add-on is free to use: We only make money when you do, with lower fees than any of the major selling sites online today.
Your Google Form doesn’t have to look generic, either. In this blog post, we shared tips on how to improve the aesthetic of your Form so that it looks more like a standard shop page—without the hours of web design or high prices for hosting.
If you want to make your Google Form easy to share and more professional in under 10 minutes, use a site like GoDaddy to buy an inexpensive custom domain (your name or your business name), then direct that domain to your Google Form. Now, instead of sharing a messy Google Form link, you can simple direct people to your custom URL!