Website Form Analytics

When it comes to website or any online product, it turns out to be difficult to understand what people think about the product that you have designed. There will be less interaction with the users and so guessing their experience is not advisable.

Taking surveys regarding the usability of the website is one of the ways to interact with the visitors. One of the way to do is to create forms and send it to the users. Depending on the responses, it would be easy for you to know what they are feeling.

But sometimes, the users won't be interested in filling the forms. To help in analyzing the various issues related with the forms, you have got the website form analytics. Let's get into the deeper insights about form analytics.

What is Website form analytics?

Creating forms and letting your users fill it is the only way to know what their experience is. But another problem within that is, the users may even feel hesitant or difficult while filling the web forms in the website.

Website form analytics is a measurement tool that is used to analyze what the users think and do while they are filling the survey form that is created. The form filling process is one important way to understand the overall thought of the users.

To state a few examples you can know how many users see the form, every activity that the users perform after entering the form, the options that they choose and reject and much more can be analyzed easily using website form analytics.

Why is form analytics important?

You might even wonder, it is just a survey form so why is it important to analyze the activities regarding the form filling process. The way interaction with the users is important, analyzing the form analytics is also crucial for a digital product.

Tracking the form filling process can help you to find out various information like,

1. Know all the actions:

The responses of the form only show you the end results of what the users has selected. But at times those responses might not be the answers to what they feel. In such cases you can see exactly what they do once they enter into the form.

2. Know what the users choose:

Survey forms generally contains questions that has options or star ratings that defines the performance of the website. There may be situations in which, they choose a different option and change their opinion. You can track those movements and analyze it.

3. Know why the users don't fill it:

There can be chances where a user enters the form and leave it in the middle without completing. The reason for this behavior may include, the length of the form, confusion in the question and much more. Know where and why they leave the form to check the issues.

5. Learn about your website:

With the help of web forms, you can actually analyze and learn more about your website and its critical points. Gather all the information from the users to know the elements that excite them the most and the issues they face.

What should you keep in mind while creating a web form?

Creating a web form is not just some random questions related to your website. These are certain factors that help in understanding the product better. So, while creating these forms certain things has to be included to increase engagement with the users.

1. Reason for creating web forms:

Randomly creating forms and asking the users to fill will not engage them. It might lead to frustration and they end up leaving the site which would reduce the UX greatly. So it is extremely important to explain the reason for creating the form.

Some ways to explain the users,

• Provide the right headline or form name for your web form. The first thing any users would notice is the name. If they feel it necessary, they would definitely approach the form to fill it.
• Clearly explain the process how to fill the web form. Before forcing the users to fill the form you should also guide them in doing so. There are high chances for them to get confused or leave the form in between.
• There are various forms for different reasons. You have to choose the right form, providing wrong details would create frustration for the users.
• Give clear and easily understandable questions. Don't complicate the format or the type of questions that are being asked.

2. Focus on the design:

The design in which you are creating the web form also influence the users mind to start filling them. As much as you focus in framing and forming the questions, you have to even concentrate in designing the form.

It is hard to make the users turn towards the web form, because they would feel in unnecessary to spend time on. A great web form with easily understandable questions and content is what is going to attract the users to fill it.

3. Ask important details:

It is extremely important to keep the format of the web forms simple and the details that you ask has to be relevant and should not ask any personal information. If the users start to feel it is unnecessary and not relevant they would immediately leave the form.

Try to reduce the number of questions in the web forms. The length and number of questions asked determines the users feeling whether to fill it or not.

It would be better if you keep the answers options simple. Like,

• Use checkboxes instead of making them answer the questions.
• Ratings in the form of stars or numbers are preferable.
• Access auto fill options for the fields that has to answered by the users.
• Reduce the time by giving multiple choice options for all possible questions.

Compile all related questions into one common question. Asking multiple question for a same element will definitely not please the user towards making them fill the web form. You can understand all these feeling by looking at the form analytics.

How can you analyze web forms?

Now that you know about how to create web forms and the metrics to design, the next step is to know you can analyze from the collected form analytics.

Form analytics can be done using various analytical tools,

• Heatmaps:

The responses and results that are obtained after the users fill the web forms can be collectively represented using a heatmap. Heatmaps generally represents the data in the form of graph and visual representation, which will be easy to understand and interpret.

• Session Recordings:

Session recordings generally record and store all activities that are happening in any type of digital product. Using the session recording feature, you can record every movement of the users inside the form and use it for form analytics.

Apart from the measurement tools, you can perform the form analytics by analyzing the behavior of the users. This would greatly help in knowing their thoughts, feeling and behavior.

• Time spent in the form:

The best way to understand the users feeling while using any digital product is by calculating their screen time inside the product. The same is also applicable to analyze the form analytics. The more time they spend, you can know how they are eager to fill the form.

In case they leave the form immediately after visiting, you can calculate it as hesitant time. This clearly defines that they aren't interested in filling the form. Mostly users tend to just visit and leave the form, coz they feel in time consuming.

• Interaction with the forms:

Another metric form analytics is the interaction time. Interaction can be witnessed by observing how they answer to the questions. Instead of just clicking on random options, you can analyze these kind of behavior by looking at the form analytics.

There are certain rates which are highly concerned with the form filling process,

a) Refill rate: This indicates the number of users who has refilled the form multiple times which can be caused by technical difficulties.

b) Drop off rate: The percentage of users who leave the form without submitting can be analyzed by looking at the drop off rate, which is due to the difficulty or confusion in filling the form.

c) Ignore rate: There are high chances where the user leaves certain fields unanswered. This can be calculated using ignore rate.

Form analytics with ReplayBird:

Learning and understanding about form analytics and its uses is not just enough, implementing it in your workspace is what is going to help you in understanding the users of your digital product.

If you are looking for one best platform to get started with form analytics, then in would be ReplayBird. ReplayBird does offers various features like,

• Session recordings
• Heatmaps
• Form analytics
• Behavior analytics
• Usability testing and much more.

Use of form analytics is one best way to understand the feeling and opinions of the users. Working in the users perspective is the only way which helps in increasing the UX and the productivity of the product.

Get started now with ReplayBird, it's no time to delay now.