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

    • Customer Statement Template not matching when sending

      Hi everyone! So when I send statements to our customers via Zoho Books, the message that appears by default does not match what I have written on the template Under settings -> email notifications -> sales -> customer statement We have a single default

    • Working with keywords

      Hello everyone, first time here so I will try to be brief. I am working on my company's data set. I have a table with all the images we have on line. For each image we hava a cell tha contains all keywords related to that image. I would like to explore

    • Peppol Malaysia API

      Hi Zoho Books, my country Malaysia will going to implement "Peppol" (E-Invoicing), starting 1 Jul 2025 for all businesses. The government intends to provide API for accounting app. The workflow involves creating an invoice from accounting app, triggers

    • Re-emitir facturas con nueva dirección de facturación

      Hola, necesito saber si es posible que las facturas ya emitidas, pueden ser re-emitidas con el cambio de dirección de facturación, realizado el día de hoy 02-01-2025, para efectos contables. Espero su ayuda, Gracias

    • Zoho Learn vs. Trainer Central

      Hi, I'm currently using Zoho One with a WordPress-based website and WooCommerce to manage my online courses. I would like to know what is the difference between Zoho Learn and Trainer Central and if it's possible for these two platforms to replace WP

    • Map Plan to Different Income Account for Some Subscriptions via API

      We have a plan that has a default Plan Account of "Sales". Can we override the account for a specific subscription via API? In some instances the same exact plan should map to a different income account. When we create stand-alone invoices in Zoho Books,

    • Flow with CRM

      Hello, I have a simple flow that uses a web hook to enter data into a Sales Order. I have the web hook sending Flow data which has a PO field. If the PO has a special character like - or / or \ the task fails. How can I get the flow to be okay with the

    • Chrome browser issues. Anyone else?

      I am suddenly having multiple issues with Chrome browser interpreting the Zoho Mail interface.  Anyone else?  Any known problems? Thanks, Todd

    • Set another Layout as Standard

      We created a few layouts and we want to set another one to standard:

    • Zoho Payroll US?

      Good morning, just reaching out today to see if there's any timeline, or if there's progress being made to bring Zoho Payroll out to be available to all states within the USA. Currently we're going through testing with zoho, and are having issues when

    • Set up multiple IMAP email addresses

      Hi, I just started using CRM and its great, but I just found out I can only add one imap email address for incoming mail in the included salesinbox ...this is ridiculous. All companies have different email such as sales@domain, info@domain , personal@domain

    • Function 58: Custom calculation in item table of invoices (2 fields)

      Hello everyone, and welcome back to our series! In Zoho Books, the Item Amount in invoices is calculated by multiplying the Quantity and Rate fields. Previously, we shared a function to include a custom field in this calculation. Today, we are taking

    • Tracking new lead response time

      Hi, I have a team of Sales Development Reps, who have a KPI of responding to a lead within 20 mins or less once it hits the system.  I seem to recall that Zoho CRM had the capability to track this in a previous version, but don't see it anywhere.   It's

    • Pushing Data from One CRM account to another.

      We have business partners that want to collaborate through the CRM. Other than pre-planned data migrations what are the options for Zoho Users to transfer data between the accounts. For instance, could I create a webhook that is sent from our CRM and then is picked up in the partner's Flow?

    • Search function not working anymore

      Hi! The search function is not working anymore. How can we solve this problem?

    • When converting a lead to an account, the custom mandatory fields in the account are not treated by zoho as mandatory

      In my Account module I have a number of custom fields that I have set as mandatory. When I enter a new customer as a new account they work, I can't save the record without populating them. However when I convert a lead, my CRM users are able to save the

    • Expand Zia's Language Support and AI Capabilities

      Dear Zoho Desk Support, I would like to submit a feature request to improve Zia, the AI-driven support assistant in Zoho Desk. Currently, Zia only supports the English language, while other AI agents such as Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude can work with a

    • get gettting the days number between two dates with deluge

      I am trying to calculate the days number between 2 specific dates but its not working. PLease help me.

    • Limit excceding issue in zoho creator

      I am transferring data from Zoho Books to Zoho Creator using a Deluge script. However, I am frequently encountering a "limit exceeding error," which seems to be related to the Deluge statements limit. I reached out to Zoho Support, and they informed me

    • How do I add more schedules to Zoho Creator?

      At the moment, the number of schedule calls we have in Zoho Creator are 1800 per month and I was wondering if it was possible to upgrade that amount to something higher. I'd like to know my options as well as the pricing.

    • Conexion CREATOR x CRM

      Buenas tardes, Tengo un problema con un código que crea un registro en CRM. Revisé el CRM para eliminar los campos obligatorios, pero cuando ejecuto el programa, aparece el siguiente mensaje de error: {"code":"MANDATORY_NOT_FOUND","details":{"api_name":"data"},"message":"required

    • Invoices with billable time and expenses

      I cannot seem to get a straight answer. We are looking to create an invoice to send to our clients, but it needs to have the following on it: 1. Billable hours for each employee. All hours for the pay period on one line, by employee. 2. Expenses for each

    • Search Bar Improvement for Zoho Commerce

      Hey everyone, I've been using Zoho Commerce for a bit now, and I think the search bar could really use an upgrade. Right now, it doesn't show products in a dropdown as you type, which would make finding items a lot faster. On Shopify, for example, you

    • Send Whatsapp with API including custom placeholders

      Is is possible to initiate a session on whatsapp IM channel with a template that includes params (placeholders) that are passed on the API call? This is very usefull to send a Utility message for a transactional notification including an order number

    • Can't get form response to populate custom PDF template

      I've created a template and set it to default but can't figure out how to get the response to populate that template. It keeps giving me the default summary.

    • Zoho Sheets not compatible with Excel/Google Sheets

      In order to share a copy of a Zoho sheet with someone that does not use Zoho, it must be downloaded as MS Excel format and then added to an email.  This is a labor intensive, and frankly confusing process.  I have forgotten to do this before, only to

    • Zoho One not working

      I'm having several issues accessing Zoho One. Some pages don't load (for example, Zoho Directory) and the labels are all messed-up (oz.account.directory.display.shorname, oz.settings...., etc.)

    • Add Ability to Designate Decision Branches as "Error Branches"

      Zoho Flow gives the ability to track down, troubleshoot, and fix errors with the Status and Filter dropdowns in the History tab. This works well for when a "normal" Flow action registers with an error. However, there are other times where it would be

    • Visitors sending message via Whatsapp are not saving on contacts

      Visitors who sends me messages from Whatsapp when i finish the chat do not populate on contacts, how can I add them as contacts?

    • ChatGPT only summarize in English

      Hello i' v enabled chatgpt in salesIQ, it works great inside conversation (revise, Rephrase etc) add tags works well with another language than English. But when I want to summarize it render only in English, despite sales IQ is set to another language.

    • Brand with multiple facebooks pages

      HI, We are a small publisher that has different FaceBook pages for each of our product lines. All are within the same FB account.   Is it possible to add all of these pages to our one brand in zoho social so I orchestrate the posts between the different products?    Cheers, Joe

    • How do I connect Sales IQ to Shopify

      How do I connect Sales IQ to Shopify.    

    • DORA compliance

      For DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) compliance, I’ll want to check if Zoho provides specific features or policies aligned with DORA requirements, particularly for managing ICT risk, incident reporting, and ensuring operational resilience in

    • Stock Count - Does it really work?

      We have been trying to use the new Zoho Inventory stock count feature. It seems great at first glance.. ..but what we can't get our heads around is if a count doesn't match you can't simply set up a recount of those that are unmatched, which just seems

    • Create Ticket from Chat with Rest API

      Hi to everyone, is possible to create a ticket from Chat with Rest API? In user interface is possible by clicking on the button "Convert chat as a ticket". Anyone know how to do that? Thanks

    • How to send binary data in invokeurl task?

      Hello, I am using Adobe's Protect PDF API. Source: https://developer.adobe.com/document-services/docs/overview/pdf-services-api/ Everything works fine in Postman. But for some reason after encrypting the file, it is empty after password protecting the

    • How Can I Customize Sales Reports in Zoho CRM to Better Track Our Sales Team's Performance?

      Hello everyone, I'm new to using Zoho CRM and need some help with customizing our sales reports. We want to track our sales team's performance more effectively and visualize trends that can inform our strategy. What specific customizations or features

    • Marketing Automation : Adding to existing Lead Score

      I want to be able to add a score to an existing ZMA lead however I can't find the field in the "Fetch Lead" action that contains the existing score. There is an action for Add lead score, but that's not clear if it overwrites the existing value or adds

    • Items should display under specific warehouse

      I have configured the multi warehouse but it show all the items under all warehouse which is not correct according to our business logic, so i want that items should only display under that specific warehouse not under all the warehouses not even with zero quantity. Some items should be common but not all so is there any option for that purpose so i can specific the items to its warehouse. Regards

    • Package Dimensions

      Packages need to have dimensions that are sent to carriers in addition to just the weight. Without the package dimensions being transmitted to carriers, the correct dimensional weight is not calculated for the label price, which results in corrections

    • Next Page