THE FORM CONVERSION REPORT
2015 An in-depth look at how various online forms are converting across ten industries and more than 650,000 form users. See what inspires your web visitors to click from form fields all the way through to “submit” buttons.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS About this Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conversion Rates by Form Type and Length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Embracing the Contest Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Be Careful What You Ask For . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Average Number of Fields by Form Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Single Page Versus Multi-Page Form Conversions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conversion Rates by Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Industry Conversion Insights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conversion Rates on Your Submit Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peak Submission Times: Form Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peak Submission Times: Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Team Behind this Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . User Demographics and External Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report
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ABOUT THIS REPORT The more your marketing efforts convince people to fill out your form, the more leads your sales team will have to nurture. Form conversion rates are a reliable way to see what’s working: you simply compare the number of people who visited a form against the total submission count.
OUR BENCHMARK RESEARCH Our team reviewed data from more than 650,000 anonymized form users to establish up-to-date benchmarks across industries and uses. For our second annual Form Conversion Report, we’ve expanded our research to incorporate more categories: New industries: The 2015 report includes form conversion rate benchmarks for healthcare and retail/e-commerce, in addition to many of last year’s industries. Additional uses: We’ve also studied conversion rates for lead generation forms— the ones typically used to accept webinar registrations, for example, or gated content downloads. The findings on the following pages are designed to provide reliable, data-backed insights companies can use to discover new marketing goals and jumpstart conversion rate optimization.
THE VARIABLES Our research includes mobile-responsive forms only. The benchmarks included in this report apply to web forms that are designed to be filled out easily on smartphones and tablets. For three industries—government, religious, and technology—outliers with disproportionately high traffic volumes were removed to reveal more realistic benchmarks.
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report
CONVERSION RATES BY FORM TYPE & LENGTH
Average Form Conversion Rate
2015
FORM TYPE 0%
2014
50%
Event Registration
11%
Order/Payment
9%
Contact
1% 14%
Survey
7%
Donation
35%
Contest
11%
Lead Gen
new for 2015
− ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ �
11% 6% 3% 21% 4% 28% n/a
highest conversion rate for 2015
When it comes to conversion rates, the type of form you use matters. A lot. This year, we discovered that contest forms are converting at an average of 35%— a 7 point increase over last year’s rate. Contact form submissions, by contrast, dropped to a mere 1% conversion rate across all industries analyzed. Survey conversion rates, while still high relative to other form types, experienced a 7 point drop. This might be due, in part, to the fact that they got longer: The average survey now contains 22 fields, compared with 21 fields in 2014. Often, it’s not just the type of form used, but the number of fields included, that makes all the difference.
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report
EMBRACING THE CONTEST FORM People love having a chance to win. Which means contest forms are a great way to capture new leads and engage with your audience at the same time. Formstack customers can even make their contest forms social media-friendly, adding major advantages to their conversion rates.
USERS WHO PROMOTE THEIR FORMS ON FACEBOOK AVERAGE UP TO 122% MORE CONVERSIONS THAN THOSE WHO DO NOT.
Capture even more entries with these three quick tips: When possible, embed contest forms on your Facebook page and other key social media channels. Conversion rates more than double (from 9% to 20%) when users integrate their forms with their Facebook pages. Make it easy on your entrants by offering to pull information from their social media profiles. Our data shows a 189% conversion rate increase when form users take advantage of our Social Autofill feature. Automate custom tweets to help spread the word and create a custom hashtag that’s unique to your contest or campaign. Tweets with hashtags tend to get twice as much engagement as tweets without them.1
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR Giving away something really valuable? You might be able to justify asking for names, addresses, emails, and permissions to send special offers. You’d have yourself a compelling contest, contact form, and email signup all rolled into one. But proceed with caution. Adding too many fields can stop entrants in their tracks. Some of the most-used form fields (text, name, and email) are also the leading causes of bottlenecks—places where users choose to abandon a form rather than submit required information. Don’t require first and last names if an email address will do. And go easy on text fields. More than 50% of Internet access occurs on mobile devices, where tiny touchpad keyboards can increase how long it takes to type long answers.2 Minimizing use of radio buttons may also help. Our research reveals this quiz-style form field, which lets users choose just one option, is a leading cause of high abandonment rates.
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report
Avoid Form Dropoff
NAME
TEXT
SUBMIT
AVERAGE NUMBER OF FIELDS BY FORM TYPE Will a contact form asking for name, location, phone, email, job title, and favorite ice cream flavor get many submissions? Not likely. But an event registration form might. The type of form you use directly impacts the number of fields it’s safe to include. Average Fields Per Form
Form Conversion Rate
25
50%
22
22
15 34%
10
11
9 11%
9%
0 Event Registration
17%
14%
Order/Payment
4
7%
1%
Contact
Survey
Donation
0% Contest
Lead Gen
Average Fields Per Form: The average number of fields (name, email, etc.) included within each type of form. Form Conversion Rate: The percentage of all visitors who successfully submit each type of form.
LONG FORMS A MUST? 4 WAYS TO “SHORTEN” THEM Often, names and email addresses just aren’t enough. Use these tricks and tips to help users complete your forms faster, so you can get the data you need: 1. Build a “smart” form that automatically shows or hides questions based on how users respond. 5
2. Give your users a breather with an option to “save and resume.”
3. Use a horizontal layout for checkboxes and buttons to create the illusion of a shorter form.
The 2015 Form Conversion Report
4. Use the matrix field to ask several similar questions at once.
SINGLE PAGE VERSUS MULTI-PAGE FORM CONVERSIONS
Tell us your th oughts Two: Page Tell us your thoughts
Tell us your thoughts
Single Page: 4.53%
Multi-Page: 13.85%
Surprise! Shorter isn’t always better. In fact, when it comes to online forms, conversion rates more than triple when fields are spread over multiple pages. Here’s why: Longer forms often use page breaks to separate fields into different sections. This makes them easier to digest compared with forms that squeeze all fields onto one page. Multi-page forms tend to include progress bars to let users know exactly how far along they are, making them more convenient and easier to complete. Bigger fonts, longer fields, larger header images, and extra spacing all make forms less intimidating and easier to digest—and often cause them to extend beyond a single screen.
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report
CONVERSION RATES BY INDUSTRY
Wondering how your company’s form conversion rates stack up to competitors’? You’ll want to look at not only the type of form you’re using, but overall averages in your sector as well. As you can see, benchmarks vary widely from industry to industry.
♥
Industry/Sector Sports
2015 CR
Technology
17%
14%
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Government
18%
8%
18%
7%
20%
4%
19%
Higher Education
10%
Religious
Media
17%
2014 CR
8%
Healthcare
9%
The 2015 Form Conversion Report
NEW
Nonprofit
14%
15%
Marketing/Consulting
13%
7%
Retail/E-commerce
11% NEW
INDUSTRY CONVERSION INSIGHTS While the sports, nonprofit, and higher education sectors remained steady, several industries experienced significant conversion rate fluctuations in the year since our inaugural Form Conversion Report. These swings may have been influenced by a number of industry-specific factors. For example: Nearly 90% of marketers are placing increased emphasis on conversion rate optimization (CRO), according to a recent Econsultancy study. As a direct result, 73% of companies report more form completions and sales gains.3 The number one type of form used by government agencies and media publishers is surveys, the second-highest converting form type studied. 39% of religious organizations are now using advanced form-building plans that provide access to special features like social media integrations, form A/B testing tools, and a Google Analytics plugin.
Quick Tip!
Enter to win! Register Below:
Submit Registration
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report
Looking for an easy way to meet or exceed form conversion rate benchmarks in your industry? Try changing up the types of online forms you use. Contests and events are among the highest-converting forms. Yet just three of the nine sectors studied use them regularly.
Submit Survey
CONVERSION RATES ON YOUR Next SUBMIT BUTTON Continue
Submit Survey
44.08%
Next
43.58%
Continue
24.6%
Ah, the submit button. It’s your last opportunity to capture a click. Which means the words contained within that one small space are arguably the most important for every SubmitSubmit Registration Submit Registration 15.59% Submit Survey 44.08% onlineSurvey form. Having a hard time deciding what words to use in your button copy? Keep it short (the Register Nowthat inspire 13.31% 43.58% Next Now top-ten convertingNext buttons all contained two words or less) andRegister use words action. Even a simple “next” or “continue” can help guide users through to completion of multi-page forms. Specific is better, too: Adding just one word after “submit” can boost conversion as 320%. 10.49% Submit24.6% Submit Continuerates by as much Continue
SubmitSubmit Registration Survey
44.08%
Submit Registration Checkout
15.59%
Checkout
9.99%
Register Next Now
43.58%
Place Order Register Now
13.31%
Place Order
9.25%
10.49%
Submit Request
9.19%
Continue Submit24.6%
Submit Registration Checkout
Submit Submit Request
15.59%
Do cultural linguistics Register Now The 13.31% Place Order matter? Perhaps. same Send variation (“send”) fared very differently across English, Enviar 10.49% Submit Submit Request Spanish, French, and German web forms. Checkout 9
Checkout
9.99%
Place Order
9.25%
Send
Enviar
Submit Request
9.99% The 2015 Form Conversion Report
5.85% Envoyer
7.55% Absenden
9.19%
Envoyer
19.91%
Absenden
21.06%
PEAK SUBMISSION TIMES: FORM TYPE
Monday
Tuesday
11 am
Order / Payment Forms
12 pm
Contact Forms
Wednesday
Thursday
Event Registrations
Friday Surveys
1 pm 2 pm
Donation Forms
3 pm 4 pm
Lead Gen Forms
5 pm While few forms are filled out between 5 p.m. and 7:59 p.m., contest entries—the highest-converting kind of form—start to roll in at 8 p.m.
6 pm 7 pm 8 pm
Contest Forms
*Based on Eastern Standard Time (EST)
You’ve built a “smart” form, fine-tuned the button copy, and enabled Social Autofill to optimize for conversions. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could now pick precisely the right moment to promote it? With form conversion data, you can. Our research indicates there are, in fact, peak days and times when people are most likely to fill out forms, and they vary widely by both industry and form type. Whether you want to broadcast your contest through a sponsored social post or send an email invitation to take your survey, selecting the right day and time can have a big impact on conversions. Basing the decision on past form submission data may help.
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report
PEAK SUBMISSION TIMES: INDUSTRY
Peak Time Frame
Monday
Peak Hour
*based on Eastern Standard Time (EST)
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
9 am 10 am ♥
11 am
♥
12 pm 1 pm 2 pm 3 pm ♥
4 pm 5 pm
♥
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Sports
Nonprofit
Technology
Government
Higher Education
Marketing/Consulting
Media
Religious
Healthcare
Retail/E-commerce
The 2015 Form Conversion Report
CONCLUSION The 2015 Form Conversion Report was created as a free resource to help companies of all sizes set their own conversion rate goals. It can be used as a frame of reference when setting benchmarks, analyzing competition, and identifying areas for improvement. To further optimize web forms for conversions, we encourage you to dig into your own form analytics to reveal the roots of field bottlenecks, identify peak promotion times, and uncover all kinds of other juicy data you can use to turn website visits into new leads.
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report
THE TEAM BEHIND THIS REPORT The 2015 Form Conversion Report was prepared by Formstack, a robust form-building tool for converting more website traffic. With an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, you can create professional, mobile-ready web forms without writing code. Convert more leads on any platform with social media plugins, advanced analytics, and form A/B testing. For more efficient lead nurturing, pass your lead data to one of Formstack’s many partner applications.
Form Builder: Easily capture leads by customizing fields, colors, fonts, headers, and more. No coding required!
Marketing Analytics: A/B test your online forms, identify friction points, and integrate with Google Analytics for more insights.
Social Media: Automate tweets, embed Facebook surveys, and let users autofill forms to optimize conversions.
Seamless Integrations: Incorporate into email marketing, CMS, payment processing, and CRM software for comprehensive marketing strategies.
READY TO USE FORMSTACK IN YOUR CRO STRATEGY? I want to increase conversions!
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report
USER DEMOGRAPHICS
TOTAL USER ACCOUNT CONTRIBUTIONS :
665,000
TOTAL INDUSTRY ACCOUNTS ANALYZED: 18,703
TOTAL FORM TYPES ANALYZED: 117,577
INDUSTRY
ACCOUNTS
FORM TYPE
AMOUNT
Sports
939
Event Registration
6,198
Nonprofit
2,919
Order / Payment
16,182
Technology
2,960
Contact
76,426
Government
595
Survey
6,943
Higher Education
1,192
Donation
6,634
Marketing / Consulting
5,379
Contest
2,318
Media
1,781
Lead Gen
2,876
Religious
530
Healthcare
939
Retail / E-commerce
1,469
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report
EXTERNAL RESOURCES 1. Quicksprout, How to Use Hashtags to Increase Your Online Presence http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/04/04/how-to-use-hashtags-to-increase-your-onlinepresence/
2. CNN Money (on Nielsen Study), Mobile Apps Overtake PC Internet Usage in U.S. http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/28/technology/mobile/mobile-apps-internet/
3. Econsultancy, Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2014 https://econsultancy.com/reports/conversion-rate-optimization-report/
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The 2015 Form Conversion Report