In many ways, form abandonment can feel more disheartening than your lead generation forms getting no engagement at all. Form abandonment shows that someone took an interest in learning more about your brand, but changed their mind. While this is frustrating, it can also be a lesson, which is why it’s important to track form abandonment.
But what can you learn from form abandonment exactly? Let’s talk about a few of the different insights you might glean.
Problems With Your Form
If you’re finding that a number of visitors click on your lead generation form and begin filling it out only to abandon it, you might have a problem with your form. This could be a bug with the website that needs to be fixed, preventing them from finishing the form. It could be a user interface problem that makes the form difficult to navigate. Or it could be that the form itself is driving leads away.
It can be tricky to get the balance of your lead generation form just right. Too many questions and you can easily ward potential leads off. Try just sticking to the basics:
- Name
- How they found your site
As long as your lead generation form is to sign up for your mailing list, that’s really all you need. If you’re conducting a survey, you might need a few more questions but try not to make the form any longer than it needs to be. The less time it takes to fill out, the more likely your users will be to fill it out.
Problems With Your Questions
Another way that tracking form abandonment can help is by pinpointing exactly the place at which most of your users abandon the form. This will vary from user to user, but see if you can find any trends. If you see a significant amount of users dropping off at one particular question, that might mean that you need to change or remove that question. Users may see it as too invasive or otherwise be turned off by it. Consider doing some market research to see why certain sections of your form might be an issue for your users.
Problems With Your User Interface
As we’ve touched on above, another issue could be your user interface. Maybe there’s a bug on your website that makes it difficult to complete the form. This could be especially problematic because customers who want to engage with your brand might not be able to. This is something you’ll want to take care of as soon as you can. Test your website and try to fill out the form yourself. Try it from multiple devices just to be sure you’ve caught everything.
Problems With Your Mobile Layout
Tangential to UI is your mobile layout. In tracking form abandonment, you should be able to see what percentage of users were on mobile and what percentage were on desktop. If a large number of mobile users are abandoning your form, that’s an issue. In mid-2023, approximately 96% of the population accessed the internet through a mobile device; and mobile usage is only continuing to grow. Make sure your website and your forms are legible and navigable on mobile as well as desktop.
Problems With Your Offerings
Chances are, if someone opens your lead generation form and starts to fill it out, they’re interested in what you have to offer. That being said, it could be that something in your form speaks to offerings that turns those same people away.
For instance, maybe they start to fill out your lead generation form because they want the PDF you’ve offered to email, but when they see the note at the bottom requiring them to receive emails about discounts and promotions, they decide it’s not worth the trouble. Of course, those discount and promotion emails are exactly what you want those on your email list to see. Consider reframing the language and showing them why those emails would benefit them. You might also make the promotional email list optional so that those who want to receive fewer emails can.
Problems With Your Audience
Another issue is that you might be targeting the wrong audience, or reaching a different audience than the one you’ve targeted. Are most of the forms that are started and abandoned by users who are outside of your intended demographic. What this might mean is that you have to change your marketing to reach the audience you actually intended to reach.
If they seem to be within your target audience but are continuing to abandon the form, do a little market research. Ask yourself if this is really the audience you need to reach. If not, rethink your target audience and then recenter your marketing.
