Introduction

There are so many things you have to do in order to convert a lead online. You’ve done all the research, and used all the right SEO tools to get them on your site, and now they’re filling in a form in order to find out more or even purchase from you. However, the worst happens and they abandon it halfway through.

You don’t have to worry though, as you can solve this problem. Form abandonment tracking will help you find out why people are abandoning forms, and help you work out how to bring them back. Here’s what you need to know.

Why Are People Abandoning Your Forms?

The first thing you need to know is, why are people abandoning your forms in the first place? There could be all sorts of reasons why they aren’t sticking around to find out what you can offer them. Here are some common reasons why they may be backing out of the site before they finish.

The Form Is Too Long

This is one of the most common reasons why people don’t complete a form on your site. The typical person is very busy, and they’re always dealing with a long to-do list. They may have taken time out to look at your site, and decided that they want to know more. They start filling out the site, and then they scroll down and see how long it is.

This can be frustrating to the average user, as they find it annoying to have to sit and input so much data. They may feel that it’s a waste of their time and decide to abandon it and go elsewhere. Obviously, that’s not great for you as a business.

There are ways of avoiding this. If you can, take out some questions on the form that you don’t need as critically while leaving the rest optional. That increases your chances of getting completed forms, as people will feel they aren’t being asked for so much.

Your Form Isn’t Mobile Friendly

In this day and age, so many people are mostly accessing the internet through their phones. As such, they’re seeing sites in a different way than you would on a desktop PC or laptop. Your form needs to be mobile-friendly, such as having larger buttons that work with touchscreen phones, and the site is formatted to mobile screens.

When a form isn’t mobile-friendly, it’s going to be annoying to try and use. In the best-case scenario, you’ll find they put off filling out the form until they get to a desktop PC. At worst, they’re just going to give up and decide to go elsewhere.

You’ll need to ensure your website has a good mobile design in order to avoid these issues. Using a website design company will help you achieve this, as most companies are well versed in the practice.

Your Prompts Aren’t Specific Enough

When creating a form, you may feel like your prompts make sense at the time. However, you have to consider what it’s like from the customer’s point of view. It’s very easy for them to leave a form if they’re not quite sure what you’re looking for from them.

For example, if your prompt says ‘name’ but you’re actually looking for ‘full name’, then you aren’t going to get the answers that you want. If a customer can’t understand what you want, then they’re going to abandon the form and your service or product.

When writing your form, be as specific as you can be. There are lots of ways you can do this. You can create an example that shows up in the answer field as a placeholder, so they can see what you’re looking for. Also, use drop-down menus to limit answers and get just what you’re looking for.

You Don’t Seem Secure Enough

This is an issue especially if someone is filling out a form to buy something. Today’s customer is savvier than ever before, and that means that they’ll be looking to see how secure you are. If they don’t get the feeling that you’ll protect their data, they aren’t going to complete the transaction. That’s especially true when they’re having to input credit card details.

As such, you need to show the customer that you take their security very seriously. You should show that you’re using end to end SSL encryption that keeps their info safe on your servers. Having that evidence online makes it much more reasonable to buy from you.

Not Being Clear About Why The Form Is Needed

This isn’t an obvious issue to you at first. After all, you know why you need the customer or visitor to fill out a form. However, the person on the other end may not. “If it’s not obvious to the customer why you’re presenting them with a form, they aren’t going to fill it in,” says Aisha Brown, a tech blogger at Write My X and 1 Day 2 Write. “Why would they take that time if they don’t know what they’d get out of it?”

As such, you need to be clear about why you’re asking them to fill the form out. What is it that you need from them? You can do this by being very clear in your call to action. “Sign up for our newsletter here” or “Enter our competition” will show them exactly why you’re asking them to fill that form in.

How to Track and Recover Abandoned Forms

You’ve done your best to stop your forms from being abandoned, but you’re never going to get 100% of them completed on the first try. You don’t give up though, that’s where the abandoned form tracker comes in. Here’s how to track those abandoned forms down, and get them completed.

Create your form

The first thing you’ll need to do is make your form, so you’ll use it through your specific form software. At this point, you’ll enable form abandonment recovery, so you can get the stats on those forms and recover as many as you can.

Track your forms

Once the form is live, you should be able to see the results in your analytics. Good form abandonment trackers will show you how many people have completed the forms vs. how many have abandoned them. They should also show you at what step the user abandoned the form. That’s highly useful info, as if lots of people are abandoning it at a certain step then you’ll be able to see that there’s a problem there.

Once you have this info, you’ll be able to start using it to track down those who abandoned the form and start making changes as needed.

Make changes as needed

You have that data in hand, so now you can start making changes to ensure that the form gets as many completed submissions as possible. As noted above, if there’s a step that keeps getting abandoned, you’ll want to revisit it. There’s most likely going to be an issue that you’ll have to solve. “Don’t be discouraged by this, as it’s very likely that the issue is simple and you’ll be able to fix it easily?” says Jason Piers, a business writer at Origin Writings and Brit Student. “Once you do, you’ll see a real increase in people completing the form.”

The problem is most likely one of the issues discussed above. Take a look at the step, and see what could be improved. For example, you may just need to leave an example answer to show the user what you’re looking for, so they don’t get frustrated and leave.

Set up form abandonment campaigns

You can set up campaigns to retrieve abandoned forms before you even set the form to be live. These can be done through your software, and are quite simple to do.

You’ll set up the form page so if the ‘submit’ button isn’t pushed after a certain period of time, you can have a pop-up show reminding the user to do so. You can use this reminder to show the customer what they’ll get when they do complete the form. For example, you can say “Finish signing up to get your free eBook today!”

This works a lot like email auto-responding software. When a customer is on the page filling out the form, they will automatically be added to a segment of the customer population of the site and will be fed that pop up as needed. Once they’ve hit “submit”, they’ll be removed from it automatically too.

Form abandonment trackers are super easy to use and can help drastically increase your lead generation. When you make your forms as good as they can be, it’s much easier for them to get involved. You can use the form software to track your form’s performance, see where people are abandoning them, and make the improvements needed. Recover your form abandonment and get the leads you’re looking for.

Author Bio:

George J. Newton is a business development manager with Write my dissertation and thesis writing service. He works with new companies to help them generate leads and grow their business as a whole. He also blogs for Next Coursework.