Web Form Analytics - Form usage, abandoned, submitted

[anonymous-matomo-user]

It would be nice if Piwik implemented Form Analytics to let us know more information about how Forms are filled in, abandoned, and how can Piwik users improve their web form conversion rates.

Form Analytics Proposal, by Adrian

 Here is what I was thinking about form abandonment/form analytics. The reason Form Abandonment is it would hook into your other form metrics you were interested in. How and why people do not finish filling in a form, what are pain points. It will help people make better form as and it is a feature, that is something which would be unique to an open source analytics.  
Basically, I thought we could create a new report which would use a version "Virtual Pageviews" which could be pivot to a new measurement called "Form Actions". It should be done without increasing pageview counts. It would look something like this:

piwikTracker.trackFormView('Form Name', 'Form Field', 'Time Spent')

A user would add it to their code to attach to their form fields, when they build a form. It would then allow a us to build a couple of new reports under goals:

    Conversion rate for forms. It would look at  the number of forms completed vs those attempted (loaded).
    A  drop rate is the number of visitors who started a form but didn't submit it. A forms version of Bounce rate.
    Completion time is the average time taken for visitors to complete the form over the period, and specific questions. It might tell a user the pain parts of a form.
    Blank field rate tells you what percentage of fields on the form are typically left empty.

The leader in the field is Clicktales, you can read about their Form Analytics here:

http://www.clicktale.com/product/form_analytics
http://blog.clicktale.com/2011/05/30/nine-reasons-your-customers-arent-converting-and-tools-to-find-out-why/

Here I found some javascript out there form people trying to make GA do things with events.

time spent: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8463280/clicktale-like-implementation-on-google-analytics

sample event tracking with GA
http://www.distilled.net/blog/conversion-rate-optimization/using-jquery-and-google-analytics-events-to-track-form-abandonment/

Actual code:
-------------------

//<script type="text/javascript" src="/jquery/purl.js"></script>

<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function() {
         var currentPage = jQuery.url.attr("path");
         $(':input').blur(function () {
             if($(this).val().length > 0){
                 pageTracker._trackEvent("Form: " + currentPage, "input_exit", $(this).attr('name'));
             }
         });
     });
</script>

Example form:
<form id="my-node-form" name="my-node-form">
<select name="field_category" id="edit-field-category">
...
</select>
<select name="field_color" id="edit-field-color">
...
</select>
<select name="field-city" id="edit-field-city">
...
</select>
<input type="text" id="edit-field-keywords" name="field_keywords[und]" value="">
</form>

    ------------

[robocoder]

For now, this has to handled on the backend where the validation occurs. A workaround is to put the tracking code on a "thank you" page.

Dupes ticket #134 which tracks the server API; #355 tracks the JS.

[mattab]

Actually this is a real feature request, but won't be implemented as requested (I think), however there will be a way of doing this.

Once #355 is done, I will add a method to send a "goal" event to Piwik. This method could also be called automatically when your newsletter form is validated. This would trigger from javascript a goal in piwik.

does that make sense? it's not possible yet but will def be once we tackle #355 and once we finish work on goal tracking plugin.\

SEE ALSO THIS FORUM POST: http://forum.piwik.org/read.php?2,83224,83313#msg-83313

[mattab]

once we track forms we can also show the information very nicely in Insights! See #2465

Updated ticket desc with Adrian proposal

[mattab]

See http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2012/11/13/track-form-abandonment-google-analytics/

[hpvd]

maybe there is a intersection with usage possibilities of event tracking? e.g. one could send an event if the user clicks into one field or more advanced one could send an event if the the user clicks from one field to another and give this event the values the user has entered in the field before....

could these functions be merged somehow? all together with content tacking see https://github.com/piwik/piwik/issues/4996#issuecomment-48575910 ? => hmm don't know...what do you think?

[StephenOTT]

Anyone ever do any work in this space?

[mattab]

Hi @StephenOTT So far no work has been work as far as we know. We might work on this in the new year. If anyone is interested please get in touch: https://piwik.org/development/

[mattab]

Form Analytics is coming soon! Check the page to learn more and be notified when it will be launched. :rocket:

[sgiehl]

Meanwhile Form Analytics plugin is available at: https://plugins.piwik.org/FormAnalytics