Analysis of the process of filling web forms on sites

The process of filling in the forms of ordering products / services by web site visitors is one of the key aspects affecting the conversion of the site. As practice shows, the difficulties that users have in the process of interacting with web forms are very often the cause of the loss of potential customers. Accordingly, the identification of these obstacles and their subsequent elimination is a necessary condition for increasing the conversion of a commercial site.

The urgency of the problem has been repeatedly confirmed in practice. For example, on one of the websites specializing in Internet marketing, out of 15 visitors who filled out the web service order form, only 2 completed this process completely and clicked the "order" button. According to rough estimates, the site owners lost orders worth about 20 thousand UAH only in 2 weeks. (~ 80 thousand rubles). And this is just one of many similar examples.

Without detailed testing, it is quite difficult to determine what difficulties the site visitors may encounter during the interaction with the order / product order forms. You can only put forward more or less reliable hypotheses about what specific moments interfere or make it difficult to fill out the web form.

In order to simplify the solution of this problem, you can use modern web analytics systems that are able to show the peculiarities of visitors' actions on the site. Testing of several websites allowed us to identify the characteristic problems that reduced the conversion capabilities of these web resources. In particular:

1. Users interacting with web forms for ordering goods / services have difficulty if it is necessary to fill more than 8-10 lines;
2. Users rather passively perceive web forms where it is necessary to write a lot of capacious information. For example: some web forms on websites of companies specializing in SEO provide answers to such questions: “How do you see your website?”, “How do you evaluate your website”, “Describe the concept of website activity”, etc. Answers to such questions require the ability to present information concisely, succinctly and in an understandable form, which can take a long time.
   In the course of tracking the process of interaction of website visitors with this type of web form, interesting results were obtained: for 5 days, none of the visitors who visited the page with the web form did not even try to fill it out. Although the analysis of the interaction with the site showed that visitors carefully studied the nature of the questions that had to be answered;
3. If the page on which the web form is located is overloaded with other information (advertising banners, links to news, other services of this resource, affiliate programs, descriptions of the discount system), then this is a serious distracting factor.
   A case from practice: every second visitor who started filling out a web form for ordering a service was distracted by viewing news feeds, loyalty programs, clicking on links to other web pages on the same site, and did not always complete filling out the form.
   At one of the analyzed sites, the presence of distractions on the service order page, only for one week led to a loss of income in the amount of UAH 10 thousand. (~ 40 thousand rubles);
4. The presence of motivating information on the product / service ordering page is also an important factor for increasing site conversion. When filling out web forms, a certain part of users “jump over” to “ About us ”, “ Questions and answers ”, “ Our clients ” pages, etc. Most likely, on a subconscious level, they want confirmation of their choice and begin to carefully read the information that they have already fluently reviewed before proceeding with the procedure for placing an order.

When analyzing the features of user interaction with web forms, it is advisable to pay attention to these points:

• What fields of the web form potential clients most often did not fill out;
• Before filling in which fields, users most often interrupt this process;
• In what order do users fill out the web form fields? Usually you can see certain trends here. Site visitors do not always fill out a form in the order in which its fields are located. It may be necessary to change the order of the rows for the convenience of your potential customers;
• With what elements of the web page did the visitors interact during the filling of the order form (the so-called “distraction factors”);
• What difficulties users experienced when filling out a web form. Signs: double or triple clicks on the form fields, order confirmation button. It is also necessary to assess the level of complexity of the questions that need to be answered by the user.

The process of tracking clients filling out web forms has another obvious advantage. It allows you to determine the contact details of those visitors who for some reason interrupted filling in the service order form (the system will save the data that users have already entered into the web form fields: e-mail, phone number, website address). You can contact them individually.
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In general, at each of the sites, the process of filling in web forms has its own individual characteristics. His analysis should be carried out as detailed as possible. Only then will it be possible to diagnose hidden problems that reduce the conversion of the site.