5 ways to adapt social distancing this holiday season using online forms

5 ways to adapt social distancing this holiday season using online forms

Hello fellow form builders, 

Social distancing measures are being woven into the fabric of daily business practices, ending many forms of direct-contact business. To adapt to this, businesses might want to change their business practices, adding necessary measures that embrace the safety-first approach. Here are a few ideas for how online forms can replace face-to-face activities while increasing efficiency: 

1. Replace fundraising events with online donation forms 

Fundraising and donation collection is common during the holiday season. This year, the chances for hosting in-person fundraising events are essentially zero and collecting donations online can help make up the difference. With a donation form you can collect donor information and the donations themselves, using online payment methods. To get started right away, you can use the ready-to-go template from here. Besides sharing the form's direct link, you can get the word out in a variety of ways:  
  • Embed donation forms onto your webpages
  • Add the donation form link into promotional text messages
  • Add form links to your email and social media campaigns
  • Add forms into your blog posts 

2. Take holiday meetups to virtual space 

Staying connected with customers and clients should be a top priority for your business. Replacing face-to-face meetings with virtual events can keep your business relevant and show customers how much you care about them. The transition to the virtual events may seem difficult, but it doesn't have to be. Zoho Forms can help by making it easy to create online RSVPs and invitations using online forms. Sharing invitations this way lets your attendees quickly register for your events. Read more on this here. 

For examples, gyms can live stream workouts to all their members. To help members enroll for the live stream, they can offer a membership form with a special holiday discount. 

3. Host restaurant forms to encourage on-the-go pickup

As restaurants resume their business, adapting to social distancing is important. Setting up an ordering service lets customers to book online from their homes and collect the orders curbside, spending just a few minutes at the restaurant.

Implementing this service doesn't need to be as technical as it sounds. You can start building a form with ready-to-go templates from here. There are also plenty of themes and custom options in our theme builder, so you can design forms that match your restaurant's other branding. If you need assistance, read this detailed guide to getting started with our theme builder.

Here are a few things you can do while designing takeout order forms:
  • Collect customer orders and specific requests using various question types
  • Acknowledge the order using email confirmation
  • Add options to make order payments online or in person
  • Deliver an e-receipt automatically

4. Allow customers to schedule appointments

To avoid long lines winding through your storefront, you can make it quick and easy for your customers to make appointments with you. For businesses dealing with merchandise, jewelry, or other physical products, this can be a great way to reduce customer traffic at their store.

Giving an opportunity to book via online appointment forms lets customers give their preferred time, share what they are looking for, and receive instructions on how to prepare for the appointment. Once they book, you can confirm on your end, giving them the confidence they need to take the plunge. 

5. Replace physical feedback with scannable forms 

Scannable QR feedback forms are a great alternative to collecting verbal feedback. Using Zoho Forms, create feedback forms tailored to your needs and convert them into a QR code. Placing these codes on the walls of your restaurant, store, conference location, or wherever else you conduct business, makes it easier for your audiences to access the form with a quick scan. 

Later, they can fill out the survey and share comprehensive feedback on your service or product. This not only avoids physical contact, but also makes it easier to collect large amounts of feedback, so you can share it with others. 

Key takeaway: Work smarter 

This holiday season, grow your business easily and safely by using smarter workflows. As you use online forms to connect with your audience, you're minimizing direct physical contact, too! Let us know if these tips were helpful and what your favorite was in the comments below.

Happy holidays!


If you have any questions or feedback to share, feel free to comment below or drop us an email at support@zohoforms.com


    • Sticky Posts

    • 5 ways to adapt social distancing this holiday season using online forms

      Hello fellow form builders,  Social distancing measures are being woven into the fabric of daily business practices, ending many forms of direct-contact business. To adapt to this, businesses might want to change their business practices, adding necessary

    • Online donations: Encourage your audience to give back this holiday season

      Hello fellow form builders, The holiday season isn't just about shopping and festivities. There's a special zeal to give back to the community as a gesture of gratitude. While donation boxes are still around, many businesses are focused on their online

    • Getting your forms ready for the holidays

      Hello fellow form builders! With the holidays coming up, we've all started to get the hang of the new normal as people get ready for all the festivity around. This year is different from others in the past, which means businesses are trying out new ways

    • 5 Ways to pull off holiday events like a pro using online forms

      Hello fellow form builders, This is the fifth post of the five-part series on "Getting ready for the holiday season with Zoho Forms." This series aims to help you make the best of your forms and grow your business this season. Holiday events are suppose to be fun, and so is hosting them. So if you are overwhelmed and it seems like your event organizing is all over the place, then something has gone wrong. Yet, sweat not - we've got you!   The entire event planning process can be made easy by automating

    • 5 ways to improve your holiday fundraising with online forms

      Hello fellow form builders,  This is part four of our five-part series on "Getting ready for the holiday season with Zoho Forms." This series aims to help you make the best of your forms and grow your business this season. Asking for money isn't easy, yet it's a crucial step for any fundraising group or organization. During this holiday season, make collecting donations fun and more effective with our list of the top five ways to improve your overall fundraising process. Let's dive in. 1. Create

    • Recent Topics

    • How do you add or update tags on Zoho CRM records via n8n? (Workarounds or best practices?)

      Hi all, I’m running into some limitations with the Zoho CRM node in n8n and was wondering how others have handled this: From what I see, the standard Zoho CRM node in n8n doesn’t allow you to add or update tags when creating or updating contacts/leads.

    • API PARAMETER FOR TICKET CLOSED TIME

      Hi, Is there a parameter for filtering tickets by closed time in zoho api, i can see closed time in the API response i get, but can't get tickets by that field while calling. Regards, Anvin Alias

    • Reply to email addresses wrong.

      I have setup my Zoho mail account using my main domain and I also have an Alias setup from a different domain. In Settings - Mail - Compose I have selected to the option "For replies, send using The same email address to which the email was sent to".

    • Audio/video quality issues with Zoho Meeting – Any roadmap for improvement?

      Hi Zoho Team, We’ve been using Zoho Meeting for both internal and external meetings, and unfortunately, the experience has been consistently poor. The video and audio quality are so unreliable that it often renders meetings ineffective—especially with

    • Meeting integration with Otter.ai

      Would love for an integration with an AI transcription service like Otter.ai to be integrated with Zoho Meeting. Thanks

    • How to close/delete a free creator account?

      I have a free zoho creator account associated with my email address that is not being used.  I want to become a user of another paid zoho creator account but I can not associate with the paid account with the same email.  I assume if I can close or delete the free account I will be able to use the paid account. I have emailed support but no response. Suggestions?

    • Zoho books and zapier causes Invalid data provided

      I have been using zoho books with zapier for over 2 years now, everything was working fine. On September 13th my zaps stopped working. Now on step create sales invoice in zoho books i get an error: Failed to create a create_invoice_v2 in Zoho Books The

    • CRM report

      Is it possible to pull a contacts report that also includes the company industry, as well as the company name? I’m having trouble combining company and contact fields – any help is appreciated. Thank you, Sam

    • Early Payment Discount customize Text

      Hi, I’m currently using Zoho Books and am trying to customize the standard “Early Payment Discount” message that appears in the PDF invoice template. I’ve reviewed the documentation here: https://www.zoho.com/books/help/invoice/early-payment-discount.html

    • Enhancements to Client script?

      Hi Zoho CRM, I've been extensively using Client Scripts to enhance our Deal form experience, particularly for real time validations and auto updating fields based on specific logic. However, I've encountered a challenge regarding permission boundaries.

    • Add views to new CRM UI navigation + Unlimited Webtabs

      Zoho CRM is so close now to being the ultimate business application with the new UI, as soon as this one feature is added. This is probably where Zoho is headed but if it's not I want to BEG for this to be incorporated. What we need is to be able to put

    • E-Mail Distribution List

      How do I create an e-mail distribution list in Zoho Mail?

    • Custom "create meeting" button with more functionality than Zoho currently has?

      I'm looking for a little help/direction in how to do this. Even just some general high level pointers on how this might be able to be done. The current Zoho Meeting Activity functionality is not ideal for my org's workflow. I'd like to try and create

    • Error Code 4: Invalid value passed for JSONString

      Okay, I want to start by saying I know I'm a terrible scripter, so sorry if this is a dumb mistake. I just can't figure it out, even with LLM help. Here's my code: // --- Input Variables --- customer_id = salesorder.get("customer_id"); so_id = salesorder.get("salesorder_id");

    • Organizing contacts/members by company

      I work for a membership organization (representing businesses) and am trying to use Zoho CRM more effectively for managing the points of contact for our members. Currently, our members are listed in our CRM by the primary point of contact's name, but

    • Allow Stripe Credit Card and Stripe ACH payment methods to be enabled separately on an invoice.

      I need to be able to pick at the invoice level whether Stripe Credit Card and/or Stripe ACH payment methods are available. Currently, I'm not able to select from the two Stripe payment methods individually on an invoice. However, there are some larger

    • Unable to search in Zoho Email

      I've started using Zoho Email (free version) recently and realized that it doesn't have email search functionality. Am I missing anything here? I've gone through the Zoho tutorial which does show the search bar on the right top of the Zoho UI. But in

    • Response Time Report

      From data to decisions: A deep dive into ticketing system reports Every organization that interacts with its customers should have an established timeframe for how soon an agent is expected to send the first response and any reply to any follow-up messages.

    • Problem : Auto redirect from zoho flow to zoho creator

      Hi there, I've been waiting for zoho team to get back on this for last couple of days. Anyone else have the problem to access zoho flow? everytime I click on zoho flow it redirects me to zoho creator. I tried incognito mode but it still direct me to zoho

    • Zoho - Outlook plugin

      Does anyone know if there is a way to modify the autofill in the Zoho plugin in outlook? When we create a contact, it enters the correct email address and name, but then pulls information from our own signature line to add phone number, address, etc.

    • Threaded conversations for emails sent via automation

      Hi Guys, I hope you are doing well. Don't you guys think we should have an option in a workflow to notify users either as a new email or the previous email thread. For example, if you have one deal in the process and there are 10 different stages during

    • Zoho Books - Sales Person Information

      Hi Team, On Invoices, Quotes, etc... I can include the Sales Person, but it only shows their name and not their email or phone number. It would be great to have place on invoice templates where we can manage what sales person information should be shows

    • Offline working in Zoho Creator portal

      Zoho's help says that offline working is only available in the Creator mobile app and not in the portal app. But I can see offline options in the portal app too and it seems to work when I test it. My portal users are often in areas where there is poor

    • Fetch Records using Dynamic Criteria

      Hi,  I have a form that builds a filter based on user input.  I need to fetch the records based on dynamic criteria.  How would I accomplish this as there is no eval function? For example: desiredRecord = Form1[dynamicCriteria];

    • Url filter Report date (pivot chart)

      Hello. Is it possible to filter the data in pivot char using parameters in the url? I'm trying but I should not doing very well. Something like: https://creator.zoho.com/.../....../#Report:MyPivotChartReport?MyDate=01-Jan-2012;31-Jun-2012;MyDate_op=58 Saludos

    • Sending gmail to a particular person fails because the address gets changed to "gmaill", with a second "l" typo somewhere

      I send to bob@gmail.com (example) and get an error sending to bob@gmaill.com, only for this one person. Note the extra "l" in the email the system tried to send to, which was not in the address I entered. Can't find a typo in the contact or anywhere else

    • Emoji Support in Bigin CRM

      We request the implementation of emoji support across Bigin CRM. This feature should allow users to seamlessly use emojis in text fields, headlines, and deals. It would enhance communication, improve the visual appeal of records, and bring more personalization

    • Bigin Booking Pages enhancements

      I would like to ask for several enhancements for the brand new (and promising) Booking feature. 1. Add "Contact/Mobile" Field to Booking form We use Mobile as key (id), but unfortunately it is missing from the Booking form, only Home Phone is available.

    • Amount in words in Indian format

      Hi, I had coded the following code to convert amount in words. But in the code in the format of US like million. But i need in Lakh and Crore. So pls suggest ideas r post corrected code string Num2Words(int val) {     val_s = input.val.toString();     th = {"", "thousand", "million", "billion", "trillion"};     // uncomment this line for English Number System     // th = {"","thousand","million", "milliard","billion"};     dg = {"zero", "one", "two", "three", "four", "five", "six", "seven", "eight",

    • What are people using to send Service based emails?

      Zoho Campaigns is for marketing. Users can unsubscribe from these emails. Service based emails need to be delivered and can without the worry of Can-spam act. What are people using to send service based emails? My mailing list is derived from a database

    • Standalone LMS tool

      Will Zoho release a standalone LMS (Learning management System) than can be used by external parties (guest)?

    • Announcing Kiosk 1.1 - Customize screen titles, configure new fields & actions, use values from your Kiosk to update fields, and more.

      Hello all We are back again with more enhancements to Kiosk. So what's new? Enhancements made to the Components Add titles for your Kiosk screens and adjust its width to suit your viewing preferences. Three new fields can be added to your screen: Percentage,

    • An Overview of Dario Schiraldi Deutsche Bank Executive

      Hello Community, Dario Schiraldi is an executive at Deutsche Bank, focused on advancing the firm’s financial services and crafting its global strategic vision. With 20 years of expertise in leadership roles, he has spearheaded successful market acquisitions

    • Emailing a document to WorkDrive

      Does WorkDrive include the ability to upload a document by sending an attachment to an email address? (Books and Expenses include this functionality) If it doesn't is it under consideration? on the Road Map?

    • Allow Changing Appointment Status from "Completed" to "No Show" or Other Valid States

      Hi Zoho Bookings Team, We hope you're doing well. We would like to submit a feature request regarding appointment status management in Zoho Bookings. 🎯 Use Case Sometimes, an appointment is mistakenly marked as Completed, but later we realize that the

    • Ability to modify what displays in calendar invite?

      I am a long time calendly user and want to make the switch to bookings.  I understand that there is not currently a meets/hangouts integration, is one on the roadmap? Is there anyway I can modify the calendar invite to include the meet link?  I can add it to the emails no problem, but I would also like it to display on their calendar.  Is there some work around I can do to get it on the calendar?  Also am I able to modify the calendar event title?

    • Zoho One and Tally Integration

      Has Anyone in this forum done any implementation with Zoho CRM and Tally accounting software. If so who have you used and how easy was it?

    • Microsoft PowerPoint files Extremely slow to save

      I and others on my team have noticed that Microsoft PowerPoint documents are extremely slow to save when using WorkDrive. It always takes over 30 seconds to save a file. Word and Excel files seem to save in a typical length of time, but PowerPoint is

    • How can users unblock their blocked Zoho Mail accounts?

      After the reason for the account block (storage exceeded, spam detection etc.) has been rectified, the user can unblock the account from the UnBlock Me page. Account support@edu2review.com  Edu2Review is an education review platform, we rate the quality

    • Adding additional fields for batch information

      Hello, I am looking at adding additional information into our inventory module. we would like to be able to see up to 8 attributes that will be individual & different for each batch (i.e. batch specific information) but currently I seem to only be able

    • Next Page