form analytics | Azghanvi's Technical Research Playground

Optimizing Web Forms for Conversions – Form Analytics

June 26, 2011 — Afnan Zari

I was doing a research how to optimize your website Forms, for example increase signup conversion, reduce shopping cart abandonment, detect / reduce bounce rate etc. After little research, I found few solutions … among which ClickTale (a paid service) sounds best … but way too expensive for opensource platform developers.

Factors that i found & could be useful in detecting user experience in filling forms are as follows:

1. Time Spend on a field
2. Field on which visitor abandoned the form
3. Blank fields that were not touched
4. Fields that needed Refill due to some javascript error / validation

Also, these areas can be very useful incorporation with stats, to see many interesting insight.

1. Regional analysis (which region has most error)
2. Client Browser analysis
3. A/B Testing of 2 forms
4. Multi-Variate Testing

~~I wish someone could develop an opensource or free solution like ClickTale form analytics as it does not sounds like very much rocket science.~~

NOTE: Updated: 4th July 2011

I’ve drafted a beta release of Visitor Analytics powered by GAE, providing a subset of above mentioned features.
Interested candidates for beta can try it out by Gmail or Email me.

Existing market tools are mentioned below …

ClickTale
http://blog.clicktale.com/2008/09/22/new-conversion-report-maximizes-online-form-performance/

RevenueExpect
http://www.revenueexpect.com/features

RevenueExpect works by capturing customers who have abandoned your shopping cart or form in real time and then transferring that data to your email service provider. With our direct integrations into MailChimp, iContant and Constant Contant, small businesses can now automate shopping cart abandonment and email remarketing campaigns.