Like in any other marketing or data collection initiative, it’s equally important to track and monitor the progress of your forms to know whether you’re getting the best outcome or not. High performing forms are different from regular forms and there are a couple of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) through which we can judge whether our form lands in the High Performing category or not.
Form KPIs are a little different from how you track and monitor your conventional business KPIs but the advantage of having them is similar to what you get through key business metrics. Here are the top benefits of having a form with KPIs:
1) Views vs Entries Ratio
The first thing to monitor in your form is its “Exposure”. This is important because we would like to know whether we are able to market the form correctly or not. If you are sharing a form’s link then it’s important to see whether it has reached the masses or not. If you have embedded the form then it’s important to see if it’s viewable and accessible to the users or not. The best way to track this is to integrate the form data with your Google Analytics (GA) data.
Not only will this help you track the form activity and engagement but it will also help you correlate the data with the rest of your website. If you are using the form as a standalone page then too you can integrate it with GA and get to know awesome data about your form’s activity. This is how you can integrate your form with your GA account.
Now that we have identified that the form is getting the required number of views, the first KPI that you need to monitor is “Views vs Entries”. An Entry is recorded every time a user clicks the “Submit” button on your form. This shows that someone has seen and completed your form.
What is the ideal Views to Entries Ratio?
This totally depends on the type of form you have created. If it is a simple contact or registration form then the ratio could be 1:8 where you would need 8 or more views to get 1 entry. However if you have created a payment form or a large questionnaire then the ratio can go up to 1:20 where you would need 20 or more views to get 1 Entry.
However, “Entries” are recorded on the basis of forms that are submitted and so they don’t guarantee that the forms were completed 100%. This leads us to the next important KPI.
2) Views vs Completions
The second important KPI to monitor is the total completions you get out of the total number of times your form was viewed. The difference in “Entries” and “Completions” is that we can call a submission an Entry whether it was 0% complete or 100% complete. If the user hits the ‘submit’ button (or any other call-to-action being used) then an Entry is recorded. However, what is important for us to know is the number of Entries we received when the form was completed 100%.
It’s important to note that this option mainly works when you use Pagination or Save & Resume features on your forms. This means that there is more than one page associated with your form. If it’s a single-page form, it will be considered complete even if few of its non mandatory fields are not complete.
In a single-page form, “Status is complete” suggests that a user has completed all mandatory fields of the form. In such case, an Entry is equivalent to a “completion” and so we can do the analysis of this KPI based on the same “Views vs Entry” graph.
What is an ideal Views vs Completions Ratio?
For a Single Page form the ratio should be the same as what we discussed above in the “Views vs Entries” KPI.
For a Multi Page form the ratio should be 1:25 where you need at least 25 views or above to get one ‘Completed’ form.
3) Completions vs Secondary Goals
Many forms have secondary goals attached to them, for example an order form may have the primary goal of receiving an order but their secondary goal could be the payment attached to the order form. So their secondary goal here could be to receive payments.
Similarly an Assignment Form hosted by a teacher can have the primary goal of receiving the information about the status of the assignments and the secondary goal within the form could be to receive the files that are uploaded on the form.
Another example of a secondary goal is for a form to have a URL redirect set on the “Thank You Page”, only shown once the form is submitted. Emailmeform has the feature that allows you to redirect users who completed the form to your own dedicated landing page where you can host another secondary goal like downloading a PDF, showcasing more items in your offer, and so on.
Therefore, it’s important to track conversion ratio of the total Completions vs Secondary Goals in order to see if the form succeeded in achieving the desired conversion or not.
4) Form Abandonment Ratio
Another very interesting and important KPI to monitor is the Form Abandonment Ratio. This could be calculated through 2 different perspectives:
- Visitors who viewed a single page form but didn’t complete or submit it.
- Visitors who viewed a multipage form and didn’t complete it till the end.
In both cases, it is important for you to see why and where users are moving away from the form. Which part, field, or page is discouraging users from moving forward and making them eventually leave the form.
For a multi-page form, it’s relatively easy to figure out which page is creating the bottle neck but for a single page form it gets harder to find where the users are dropping off. If the fields are not mandatory then we can analyze the data with the help of the fields that are mostly left empty and it would give us a clear idea that users are not comfortable with filling in those fields. However, if the fields are mandatory then users who do not fill them in would not be allowed to submit the form and hence we can never analyze which field discouraged them from moving forward.
Emailmeform offers the flexibility for detailed form tracking especially through Google Tag Manager (GTM). Users can place a GTM code at the back of the form and then track the fields via the “on_hover” or “on_blurr” code and see the performance of each and every field. This way it’s easy to know which fields are creating bottle neck and users are reluctant to fill out.
What is an acceptable Abandonment rate?
Every form has different settings, goals, target market, exposure, etc. Therefore, it’s hard to rate all forms according to one criteria and the best would be for you to find out your own acceptable Abandonment rate in relation to your business, industry, and target market.
However, the main goal of tracking the abandonment rate is to continuously work on reducing the percentage by monitoring the data and tweaking the form and its marketing in order to get better results.
5) Forms Conversion Rate (A/B Testing) Ratio
Optimizing forms to the point where you are either receiving the highest possible conversion rate or you see a consistent conversion rate with no obvious improvements is very important when you’re working on getting the maximum out of your forms. Similar to how Lead/Squeeze pages are tested, it’s important to experiment with A/B tests of your forms to get the highest conversion rate.
Forms are a vital part of any conversion flow and companies invest a lot of time to come up with the correct design and layout of these forms in order to get better conversion rate. Emailmeform allows users to either change the forms completely by testing two different variations altogether or to change just the themes of one form in order to see if any particular design and layout works better.
Themes can be created separately and can be changed through the Emailmeform tool without changing the URL of the form. This allows users to A/B test their forms to see which variation is giving them better results. For any user, conversion rate or click through rate is extremely important therefore one of the important KPIs to monitor is the A/B testing ratio that will determine the best variation that is converting at a higher rate than others.
What is a typical difference in conversion rate we can expect while doing A/B testing?
Aesthetics play an important role in the conversion rate of any form. We have tested the Beautiful Forms, which have a better layout and design, and it turned out that they convert 17% more than a regular or basic form. Therefore, by testing two different variations of the same form, you can expect to see a difference in conversion rate, which will help you choose the best one for your goals.
Form optimization is the key to getting better results out of your forms and by monitoring these or other important KPIs, one can improve the quality of their forms to a point where they are giving the highest possible conversion rate. This is an area which is usually neglected as it is mostly considered that a form being functional makes it acceptable to everyone. Most users think that the conversion rate would be the same regardless of form layout, however, the data gathered through a number of experiments we performed, has shown that beautiful and good looking forms with better conditional formatting get increased overall submits/conversion rate than basic forms.
By having more control over your forms and by seeing them convert at a higher rate, your business will see a peak in conversions and you’ll be happy to see these improvements, with minimum effort on your side. Diving deep into your data will give you more power and knowledge that your competitors may not have. Beat your competition through better tracking and form optimization.
Jovana Milankovic
Jovana is a content creator and marketing manager at EmailMeForm. Her job is to curate our software to the world and make it more human for our users.
