Can you imagine a website without a contact form or any other type of form? Well, I for one can’t. It is one of the primary methods of lead generation for businesses and individuals alike.
If you are using WordPress as your content management system, there are many form builder plugins available out there which can help you create beautiful and functional forms. One of my favorites is WPForms. Using WPForms, you can create advanced forms on your website right from your WordPress dashboard.
I use it on some of my client websites and recommend it to all my readers. When I say that it is one of the best WordPress form builder plugins out there, I mean it. If you don’t trust me, you can check out its 4.5K+ five-star reviews on the WordPress plugin repository.
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What is form abandonment
Form abandonment happens when people visit your contact page (or any other page with a form on it) but leave without performing any action on your site. Ideally, they should have filled the form and hit the submit button. But, they didn’t.
Importance of forms in lead generation
Many online businesses rely heavily on forms to capture leads. According to one survey by HubSpot, 74% of marketers are using web forms for lead generation, and 49.7% of marketers say that web forms are their highest converting lead generation tool.
Also, it was found that multi-step forms convert 86% higher than regular forms.
These forms include contact forms, email subscription forms, conversational forms, and more. Apart from that, businesses are using forms to create surveys, collect electronic signatures, payments, and more.
If you belong to the above category, you must make sure that your forms are optimized for conversions by reducing the form abandonment rate.
If not, it can really hurt your conversions, revenue, and your entire business.
Anyway, before you can start working on reducing form abandonment in WordPress and recover lost leads, you must track your form’s performance using Google Analytics to find the exact percentage.
How to track form abandonment using Google Analytics
If you are using Google Analytics on your website, you can easily track form abandonment using the MonsterInsights Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and its Forms tracking add-on.
Step 1 – Install the MonsterInsights plugin by following the instructions from my detailed MonsterInsights review (under ‘How to set up MonsterInsights’).
Step 2 – Go to the MonsterInsights Addons page and install the Forms addon. Once you have installed it, MonsterInsights will automatically start tracking all forms present on your website. It is compatible with most of the popular WordPress form builder plugins out there.
Step 3 – You can verify its status by visiting the MonsterInsights Settings page and clicking on the Conversions tab.
Step 4 – You can view the WordPress form tracking reports by going to MonsterInsights Reports page and clicking on the Forms tab.
That was quite simple, right? Well, that’s the simplest way you can track form abandonment in WordPress using Google Analytics. Now, let’s see how you can reduce form abandonment in WordPress.
How to reduce form abandonment
In the following section, I have outlined some of the best and working methods to reduce form abandonment in WordPress. Now that you know how to track your forms’ performance, you can really tell if the below methods are working by tracking their performance over a campaign period.
Capture partial entries
The very first step to reducing form abandonment is by capturing partial entries. You can do this by using WPForms as your primary WordPress form builder plugin.
WPForms comes with a separate Form Abandonment add-on to help you do just that. But hey, you will be needing the Pro version for that since it’s a premium feature.
Now, let’s see how you can reduce form abandonment using this simple WPForms Form Abandonment addon.
Step 1 – Once you have purchased WPForms Pro, log in to your WPForms account, download the latest version, and install it on your WordPress site. Don’t forget to activate it with your license key.
Step 2 – Go to the WPForms Addons page and install the Form Abandonment Addon.
Step 3 – Now, while creating any form on your site, you can enable the ‘form abandonment lead capture’ feature from the form Settings panel to capture partial form entries for that form. You can also configure it to capture leads only if an email address or phone number is provided.
WPForms will now start saving the entries for the abandoned forms and lets you export them.
Step 4 – Go ahead and embed the form on a page. Since WPForms is optimized for the Gutenberg editor, you can easily insert the WPForms block and choose your form from the drop-down. If you are still using the Classic editor, you can insert it directly from the editor using the shortcode.
Step 5 – Under the form Entries section, you can find all the form entries including the abandoned ones. Just choose the required form and it will display all the form submissions and their conversion status.
You can now contact these potential leads and discuss with the products or services they might be interested in.
Send retargeting emails
Now that you have collected a list of potential leads, you can add them to an email list and set up a drip marketing campaign. Alternatively, if you are a small business, you can reach out to them with a personalized message.
Tip: Before you send out a marketing email, make sure you are authorized to send them an email by displaying proper privacy policy and terms of service page on your website. It should include how you collect, process, and store information you collect from your website visitors.
Use exit-intent popups
One way you can collect more leads in the first place is through getting your forms in front of more people. You can do that by using a WordPress lead generation plugin like OptinMonster and displaying an exit-intent popup. It is proven that exit-intents popups are the easiest way to capture potential leads before they leave your site.
There are so many WordPress lead generation plugins available out there but OptinMonster is the best. You can learn more about it from my OptinMonster review.
The idea is of using an exit-intent popup is pretty simple. Instead of displaying a pop up as soon as a site visitor lands on your site and preventing them from going through what you have got to offer, you are giving them enough time to learn about you and then, when the visitor gets ready to leave your site, a popup will be displayed to grab their attention. This time, there are more chances for them to fill your form.
It can be an email subscription form, an inquiry form, or any other type of lead capture form.
P.S. OptinMonster is brought to you by the same people behind WPForms and MonsterInsights. And they are compatible with each other.
Split test your forms
If you are not sure why your forms are not performing well (high form abandonment rate), you can create different versions of your forms and display them to different sets of users to find which one if performing well.
Here’s how you can get started –
Create two different forms (A and B) with different messages, pictures, colors, and call to actions. Display them both to your site visitors for a week or a month – either form A or B but not both to the same visitor.
Now, have a look at the form abandonment rate for both the forms (remember that this is easy if you have got the MonsterInsights Forms tracking add-on). Keep the form which is performing well and delete the other form. To get the best results out of this strategy, you must keep testing different versions of your forms until you reach your expected form conversion rate.
Note that if you don’t have a specific number for the conversion rate in mind, it’s difficult to reach your goal.
Make your forms mobile-friendly
Nowadays, the number of people using mobile devices to connect to the internet is higher than the number of people who use desktop computers to access the web.
If you are still using an outdated theme on your WordPress site, I highly recommend you to upgrade to a responsive WordPress theme. Responsive WordPress themes are those which can adapt to the resolution of the screen size and display the content accordingly without affecting the user experience on your site.
Likewise, it is also important that your forms are optimized for the mobile web. Using a good theme can do the trick for you. But it’s always better to test them on mobile devices.
Your forms should load properly on mobile devices and the fields must not disappear or get cut off at the edge of the display. Also, the submit button must be visible and clickable.
I have seen many websites where the forms were either larger than the screen or the button was not responsive and it didn’t save the information. This is a strict no if you really care about gathering leads from mobile site visitors.
Be clear about your data policy
Nowadays, people are well aware of their privacy rights, thanks to the GDPR. You can’t just ask for their email addresses and expect them to fill in the form.
Give them a good reason why they must share their information with you and what you will do with it. It can be for getting a copy of your latest eBook, staying updated of your latest offerings, new products in inventory, discounts, etc.
You should also be clear about your data collection and data retention policies. If you share the collected data with third-parties, make sure you mention it and provide them with a link to your privacy policy page. This will give them more confidence in you it will save you a lot of time in the future.
Also, provide them with an easy way to unsubscribe from your emails get their data deleted from your site if you want to stay GDPR compliant.
Now that you have learned how to reduce form abandonment in WordPress, it’s time for you to get your copy of WPForms.
Get WPForms Now
As I had mentioned earlier, the simplest way to reduce form abandonment is by collecting partial entries and converting them to paying customers. You can easily do this using WPForms Pro along with any email marketing platform of your choice. Although I recommend GetResponse or AWeber.
WPForms comes with a 14-days money-back guarantee. In case you are not satisfied with it after purchasing (which won’t be the case, trust me!), you can easily get a refund with no questions asked.
Conclusion
I hope you found this guide helpful and learned how to track and reduce form abandonment in WordPress. If you did, please consider sharing this post with your friends and fellow bloggers on social media. It might help them someday.