Form Analytics to optimize website forms for lead generation.
By Deborah Arputham (originally for Zarget blogs)
Form Analytics gives you comprehensive reports on how users behave and interact with your forms. But very few go beyond visits and conversions to probe into what the other metrics imply. In an age where online businesses are crazily competitive, you just cannot afford to be ignorant.
Website forms are the gates through which leads enter a business, and that’s why it’s important to optimize and keep them at their best — at all times! Visits and Conversions cannot solely groom a form to its best. Only an absolute attention to all the Form Analytic metrics will help you understand visitor behavior completely.
This blog will discuss in detail all the Form Analytic metrics that matter and the possibilities they imply.
A low number of visits
Visits refer to the number of visitors the form contained web page receives irrespective of whether they interact with the form.
Visits is a critical metric because it talks about the visibility of your form elsewhere.
Here’re a few things you can do to improve this metric:
1. Distribute your form’s link or in other words, market your form.
2. In the referral pages, place your form in a prominent and visible spot. You can put it on your high performing pages and bottom of your blogs and tutorials are also sweet spots for form conversions because someone who has taken the time to devour the content to its end is likely to sign up.
3. Extend the form at the right time. You can’t expect a user to sign up even before they have begun shopping. Use or extend a form only when you have to.
4. Avoid opening forms in new tabs. People may assume such forms to be fake or insecure.
5. In the case of sign up forms, Social Sign Up option is another quick win. It solves password fatigue, replaces long forms with a single click, and brings in quality leads.
Form Abandonment rate
Abandonment rate represents the rate at which visitors leave the form without interacting with it. If a form has a good number of visits but not enough starters, then the abandon rate would be high. Here’s a quick checklist to fix this metric:
1. Tell your visitors the benefits of filling the form. Offer a clear value proposition. You could say, for example — Sign up and get 50% off on your first purchase.
2. Step back and ask yourself if the form is visually appealing. Get opinions from others. Make certain the form looks simple and easy to fill. Double-check spacing between fields to avoid clutter that puts off visitors. Use single columned forms because visitors perceive them to be easier to complete than multiple columned ones.
3. Gamification, urgency, and improved usability can go a long way. Not only with web forms but also in other places on your website.
Time in the field
Average time spent on a field will tell you how long visitors took to fill it. It will directly affect the time required to finish the form. And time = effort.
1. Give your visitors very minimal information to scan. For instance, avoid using the drop down menus. Long drop-down menus are time-consuming. Try replacing them with a mix of easier controls like datepickers, sliders, switches, steppers, and radio groups.
2. Ask for an email address or phone number instead of usernames, because people don’t make up their mind quickly in choosing a username, and when they do, it’s taken already. Also, there is a better chance of remembering their mail ID and phone number when compared to their new cool username.
3. Use clear and crisp labels — This might also be a call to avoid unnecessary jargon, humor, and creativity in labeling that might be causing ambiguity.
4. Use autocomplete to fill out fields wherever and whenever possible. Address fields are one of the most frustrating fields to fill. Try to auto-fill parts of the address. For example, when the user enters the zip code, automatically complete the city name.
5. Tell the device what keyboard to display depending on the input for the field — characters for name fields, numbers for debit/credit card fields and so on. Here’s an example from the Guardian:
Corrections
The corrections report shows you the fields that urged the users to refill the form fields.
A high number of corrections in a field implies that there was ambiguity. It is important to optimize such areas to avoid frustration and friction in the form conversion process.
Here’re a couple of things you can try, to handle and reduce corrections.
1. Use simple, straightforward, and directing labels. Also, group labels and their input fields to avoid ambiguity.
2. Guiding error messages — Provide clear and guiding error messages instead of just refocusing on the label. And this is clearly not the place to experiment with your creative streak or humor. Your visitor is already struggling. On second thought, it also depends on how good you are at being creative or humorous. But ideally, you should be able to give directions even before the visitor fills the field instead of throwing errors later.
3. Give input area a right width so that the visitor can easily review the entire input.
4. Implement inline validation because users tend to get frustrated if you throw a lengthy list of error messages when they hit submit. Inline validation also gives them a growing sense of being done with one thing at a time.
5. Auto fill/complete also helps to reduce corrections. It saves visitors’ effort and time, and for business, it brings in quality data.
6. Avoid using labels as placeholders because visitors tend to skip them assuming they’re already filled. Also, it makes difficult to review a field at a later stage, because you won’t be able to see the corresponding labels.The visitors should be able to read the label at all times.
7. Use input formats as placeholders to avoid format errors. As they say, the best error messages are those that never show up.
8. Give visitors the Show Password option — Password is the world’s most corrected field (I assume that). It’s easier to make mistakes when you can’t see what you are typing.
9. Show them when their CAPS LOCK is ON.
Drop-offs
The Drop-offs report shows you the last field your users were active on before leaving the form.
It is a crucial metric and points to the major hindrances for conversions.
1. Step back, and check if the form field is necessary. No? Scratch it!
2. Explain why it is essential. Example, we need your email address to send you purchase receipts.
3. Use trust badges. Especially, when you are in a business that involves everyday online money transactions with your customers. Trust badges establish the credibility of your form containing page and gives your visitors the confidence to share sensitive information.
4. Test your forms across all devices and browsers to eliminate technical difficulties if there are.
5. Place fields in a logical order to increase visitor engagement gradually. Nobody will be ready to fill out a form that demands credit card number as the first field.
6. Make use of progress bars for multi-level forms. Progress bars break down one tedious goal into smaller goals, making them easily achievable. And that sense of achievement is used to drive the visitor into further engagement with the form.
7. As an alternative for progress bars, use a logical grouping of fields — personal information, shipping information, billing information et cetera.
8. Captchas are another popular put off — It would be ideal to handle spam at your end and remove Captchas. But if you want to use them, try gamification and make captchas fun. Or replace them with simple questions like ‘What’s the capital of France?’
If colors and cartoons are not your types, try something like the one below from Emirates Airlines:
Blank rate
The blank rate shows the frequency at which a field is left empty in a form.
To optimize form fields that are often left blank:
1. Display clearly what’s optional and what’s not. Instead of a not-so-visible asterisk, use ‘optional’ to show differentiation between fields that are mandatory and those that are not. Also, explain why the field is required and how it will benefit them.
2. Remove the field if it’s not super necessary, you can always ask for more information at a later stage (meaning, after they convert).
3. Hide what’s not needed until it’s needed — For example, instead of displaying the fields for permanent and billing address, you can show the fields for billing address after confirming if permanent and billing addresses are different.
Hesitation time
Hesitation time of a field represents the time between the focus and the time taken to type the first character in the field.
If metrics point to a high hesitation time in a field,
1. Go back to your labels, and see if they’re simple and understandable.
2. For a field asking for sensitive information, explain why it’s needed. Also, try adding trust badges.
3. Use input formats as placeholders to give clear directions on how to proceed with the input.
Device specific engagement
Device Specific engagement report gives you an idea of how your form is performing on various devices. If user engagement is not uniform and optimum across devices, it means you need to pay attention to improving their experience.
1. For example, try pushing mandatory fields to the top because mobile users don’t scroll much.
2. Use prominent and tappable CTAs.
3. Single column forms and top aligned labels work well for small screen gadgets.
4. Give at least 44px tappable area ( less can also be accepted if there is nothing around the tappable part).
5. Check and fix technical issues across devices.
Failed rate
Failed rate represents the rate at which visitors left the form after interacting with it.
Here are a few things that might help you bring down the overall failed rate:
1. Self-segmentation — Give visitors an option to self-segment themselves. It eliminates the fear of being bombarded with emails and shows you are considerate about how comfortable they are in receiving communication from you.
2. Crack the CTA — Tell users what they get instead of what they ought to do.
3. Take efforts in forgivingly handling errors. Errors make people feel bad about themselves. — DO NOT reset forms if there is a mistake in the input.
4. Avoiding using words that bring a sense of failure or fear — oops, error, failed, problem, wrong, prohibited et cetera. These have negative connotations.
5. Be creative, make the process fun, don’t make your visitor feel like it’s a tedious chore.
In the end, always remember to be courteous, and say thank you after a submission.
We know that was an exhaustive list, so we planned a quick recap for you!
Recap:
This post originally appeared at Zarget blogs: How to use Form Analytics to optimize your website forms for conversions.
For a further understanding of how these metrics work, check out Understanding Form Analytic metrics in Zarget. In case you decide to try it yourself, here’s a FREE TRIAL (No Credit Card Required).
If there’s something we missed, drop a comment and let us know. We’ll be thrilled to know what worked for you!
