Abandoned forms tend to affect your website by reducing revenue. These forms are also the main cause of lower conversions. If abandoned forms can be recovered and tracked it will result in increased revenue. So, what is form abandonment? We’ll look closely at the definition, how to spot it and reduction methods.
First of all, form abandonment is what happens when a user of your website is in the process of submitting a form and then decides to leave it. If a user starts to fill in a form and then abandons it is called form abandonment. There can be many causes for this ranging from a buggy form to bad UI (user interface) experience or just the user changing their mind or being distracted. All websites that have UI interaction with the users can be affected by form abandonment.
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Why is form abandonment a problem?
Forms are the part of the website that might be really important when it comes to user interaction. Forms are used in a variety of places. A user might use a form to subscribe to an email list, to fill in reviews for a product, or just fill in contact information that can be used to make a sale. Research says more than 70% of shoppers abandon their checkout forms.
That is a large amount of revenue in unfinished transactions. If form abandonment is tracked and resolved, there are chances of large gains to be made. To fix this issue you must first know which forms are abandoned frequently. Then those forms can be fixed so that abandonment should reduce. Let us look at how to track a form first.
How to track form abandonment
There are many free plugins and tools that work in sync with Google Analytics and WordPress or other CMS. These tools help you analyse website traffic Using Google Analytics.
To use the plugins first, login to your WordPress dashboard that is on your hosting service. Proceed to install and activate the plugin. After activation you need to go to the settings page and enter your license key. You then connect your Google Analytics account to the tool using the setup wizard. If the tool uses your Google Analytics account chances are it will not work without it.
Once you set up your plugin, it is time to track your form. You should go an install the forms tracking add-on from the addons page. Typically, these tools will automatically detect your WordPress form plugin and enable form tracking. To verify the tracking, you can switch to the conversions tab. Your form builder should be under the “enable form conversions tracking” option.
It will then, collect all the information from your forms as users are using it.
Analysing a report from your Plugin
Using a special tool to aid you simplifies the information that Google Analytics provides. If you go to the reports tab you should see each of your forms listed with impressions, conversion, and conversion rates. You can analyse forms with high impression and low conversion rates. These are the forms that people are looking at but not filling out. Let us deep dive into finding out what is happening with these forms. Some things to keep in mind that will help you reduce form abandonment
Tracking form abandonment is the first step in fixing this issue.
Let us now talk about how we should reduce our form abandonment. Here are a few tips to follow that will help you reduce form abandonment.
Evaluate and optimise page speed
One of the main reasons a form or shopping cart might be abandoned is when there is a delay in Page loading time. Test the pages containing a form using an online speed test tool.
Issues might be a faulty form or bad hosting.
Fix the former by optimising the form and using a good web hosting solution to ensure consistent form load times.
Build better forms
It is important that you use forms that are easy to fill, because you need to get maximum information with minimum effort. This might make a form longer and people do not like long forms. Here are some of the things to do to make your homes better:
- Remove unnecessary fields.
- If your form is long, make it a multipage form. This helps the user split their effort and it’s easier to fill.
- Move your form to a separate page and use a landing page, this helps isolate your form and makes it easier to fill without distracting the users.
- Make the forms conversational, as this makes it more informal and easier to fill.
Make your forms responsive
Google Analytics states that a majority of the users for web sites are from mobile devices, and if your form does not scale well to a smaller screen you might lose users. Look to using a theme that is modern and responsive. A responsive WordPress theme will increase usability on smaller devices. Your form should load properly and not scroll horizontally or get cut off on a smaller screen. The submit button should also be clear and easily usable.
