What are Abandoned Forms?
81% of people recently abandoned at least one online form and most won’t return to complete it (Source: The Manifest Online Forms UX Survey)
Form abandonment happens when a visitor starts filling out a form on your website but doesn’t complete it and abandons it. If you consider all the efforts that have been put in until that point, running ads, generating leads, blogging, social media marketing, email marketing and other marketing strategies, form abandonment really bites.
What makes things worse is that form abandonment is growing. A Barilliance’s study found that the average cart and form abandonment rate between 2016 and 2020 has been slowly but steadily rising.
Solving form abandonment should be high on every business’ to-do list because it can increase revenue without additional marketing. All you have to do is reduce friction in order to nudge the visitor over the line and cash in 10% – 15% more revenue from your existing efforts.
Why do forms get abandoned in the first place? There are various factors at play here. The majority of the people leave forms because they don’t trust the website with their personal information. Some people find forms too lengthy to complete and can’t be bothered to fill in everything. Sometimes copy is not convincing or the form fails to communicate the value proposition.
Demographics also play a role. Millennial shoppers (aged 25-34) are the most indecisive online, according to retailers. Similarly, studies show that women are more likely to abandon their shopping carts than men.
Additionally, the intent of the user also matters. It’s possible the visitor is not ready to sign up for your product or service and is still making their decision. Nevertheless, the following simple improvements can help reduce abandonment for all of the above cases:
How Can You Solve Abandoned Forms?
From design to functionality, there are several ways you can immediately reduce form abandonment on your website.
Form Length: Reduce the number of required fields on your forms. It’s proven from studies that fewer form fields generally leads to more people completing forms.
Value Proposition: Forms that convey the value proposition tend to do well, as people feel they are achieving something by filling out the form. Adjust your call-to-action (CTA) buttons and copy from generic defaults (ie. “Submit”) to better resonate with & convert users.
Reduce Friction: There can be many sources of friction in forms. Are you asking for personal information that isn’t necessary such as a phone number? Maybe your form copy isn’t in line with the copy of the page or your form design isn’t blending with the page and looks out of place. Are there any fields in your form that are confusing? Try to reduce all and every kind of friction to help your visitors.
Privacy and Consent: As the internet continues to change our lives, privacy is becoming more and more critical. Data is the new gold and people are reluctant to provide their details online without being assured that their data is safe. You might find it beneficial to include links to your privacy policy and relevant knowledge articles under your forms.
A/B Testing: A/B testing is the process of testing two different variations of a marketing campaign, such as an ad text, a headline, call-to-action or any other element of the campaign. You will then be able to change your strategy to create content that appeals more to your target customers when you can clearly see which campaign customers reacted to more.
How Can You Recover Abandoned Form Leads?
The problem, however, is that you can never eliminate form abandonment entirely, due to the inevitable nature of the issue. For instance, as mentioned earlier, it is possible for a visitor to abandon the form because they are not ready to purchase yet, as they are still doing their research. Alternatively, they may have stumbled upon the form unexpectedly and have no intention to fill the form, to begin with.
After you have done all you could to reduce form abandonment, the next step is to recover leads that have abandoned forms. Anyone can achieve this with their existing forms, no coding knowledge required, with Insiteful™: a powerful tool to uncover more leads from your existing web forms. It automagically tracks, engages & converts 100% of prospects that start to fill out your forms. Never miss another opportunity with Insiteful.
1. Track all Web Form Activity
Tracking user activity is the first step to understanding why people are leaving the forms without completing them. Insiteful can help you track web activity without any elaborate setup or coding experience. In just a few clicks (under two minutes), Insiteful tracks all your existing forms at the field level.
2. Tracking all Form Entries, Including Partial and Incomplete Submissions
If someone starts filling out one of your lead forms, this usually indicates they are a warm prospect. As such, it is worth all possible efforts to capture and follow-up with leads that do so. With Insiteful you can capture partial and incomplete submissions effortlessly: simply add our one-line tracking code to set up partial entry tracking on your existing forms.
3. Sync Missed Leads to CRM
To keep everything streamlined and effective, Insiteful can automatically sync missed leads to the CRM of your choice. Insiteful is compatible with many industry-leading names such as Salesforce, HubSpot, or even Slack — it requires no-code to set up!
4. Automate Lead Recovery: Follow-up, Retargeting, etc.
Depending on your business, it might be worth following up with the leads manually; however, if your lead volume is relatively high, it probably makes sense to have automatic follow up in place. In this case, Insiteful is the perfect solution: you can not only follow up with the leads automatically with custom drip email sequences but also add these leads to your retargeting ad campaigns.
5. Convert Distracted Leads with Saved Progress
Saved progress is a new unique option that is only available with Insiteful. With this feature, you can enable returning/repeat visitors to save their progress & seamlessly resume later where they last left off on your website. With Insiteful, this requires no coding knowledge and literally takes one click to enable saved progress on all your existing forms.
With these five simple tips, you can immediately boost your form conversions today. If you read this far, you might be interested in Insiteful: the CRO tool designed specifically for capturing & converting more leads from your existing web forms. Learn more today about what Insiteful can do for you, or why form abandonment matters for your business’s bottom line.
