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• A Guide to Ethical Web Analytics in 2024

  17 juin 2024, par Erin

  User data is more valuable and sought after than ever. 

  Ninety-four percent of respondents in Cisco’s Data Privacy Benchmark Study said their customers wouldn’t buy from them if their data weren’t protected, with 95% saying privacy was a business imperative. 

  Unfortunately, the data collection practices of most businesses are far from acceptable and often put their customers’ privacy at risk. 

  But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can ethically collect valuable and insightful customer data—you just need the right tools.

  In this article, we show you what an ethical web analytics solution can look like, why Google Analytics is a problem and how you can collect data without risking your customers’ privacy.

  What is ethical web analytics ?

  Ethical web analytics put user privacy first. These platforms prioritise privacy and transparency by only collecting necessary data, avoiding implicit user identification and openly communicating data practices and tracking methods. 

  Ethical tools adhere to data protection laws like GDPR as standard (meaning businesses using these tools never have to worry about fines or disruptions). In other words, ethical web analytics refrain from exploiting and profiting from user behaviour and data. 

  Unfortunately, most traditional data solutions collect as much data as possible without users’ knowledge or consent.

  Why does digital privacy matter ?

  Digital privacy matters because companies have repeatedly proven they will collect and use data for financial gain. It also presents security risks. Unsecured user data can lead to identity theft, cyberattacks and harassment. 

  Big tech companies like Google and Meta are often to blame for all this. These companies collect millions of user data points — like age, gender, income, political beliefs and location. Worse still, they share this information with interested third parties.

  After public outrage over data breaches and other privacy scandals, consumers are taking active steps to disallow tracking where possible. IAPP’s Privacy and Consumer Trust Report finds that 68% of consumers across 19 countries are somewhat or very concerned about their digital privacy. 

  There’s no way around it : companies of all sizes and shapes need to consider how they handle and protect customers’ private information. 

  Why should you use an ethical web analytics tool ?

  When companies use ethical web analytics tools they can build customer trust, boost their brand reputation, improve data security practices and future proof their website tracking solution. 

  Boost brand reputation

  The fallout from a data privacy scandal can be severe. 

  Just look at what happened to Facebook during the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The eponymous consulting firm harvested 50 million Facebook profiles and used that information to target people with political messages. Due to the instant public backlash, Facebook’s stock tanked, and use of the “delete Facebook” hashtag increased by 423% in the following days.

  That’s because consumers care about data privacy, according to Deloitte’s Connected Consumer Study :

  • Almost 90 percent agree they should be able to view and delete data companies collect 
  • 77 percent want the government to introduce stricter regulations
  • Half feel the benefits they get from online services outweigh data privacy concerns.

  If you can prove you buck the trend by collecting data using ethical methods, it can boost your brand’s reputation. 

  Build trust with customers

  At the same time, collecting data in an ethical way can help you build customer trust. You’ll go a long way to changing consumer perceptions, too. Almost half of consumers don’t like sharing data, and 57% believe companies sell their data. 

  This additional trust should generate a positive ROI for your business. According to Cisco’s Data Privacy Benchmark Study, the average company gains $180 for every $100 they invest in privacy. 

  Improve data security

  According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach report, the average cost of a data breach is nearly $4.5 million. This kind of scenario becomes much less likely when you use an ethical tool that collects less data overall and anonymises the data you do collect. 

  Futureproof your web analytics solution

  The obvious risk of not complying with privacy regulations is a fine — which can be up to €20 million, or 4% of worldwide annual revenue in the case of GDPR.

  It’s not just fines and penalties you risk if you fail to comply with privacy regulations like GDPR. For some companies, especially larger ones, the biggest risk of non-compliance with privacy regulations is the potential sudden need to abandon Google Analytics and switch to an ethical alternative.

  If Data Protection Authorities ban Google Analytics again, as has happened in Austria, France, and other countries, businesses will be forced to drop everything and make an immediate transition to a compliant web analytics solution.

  When an organisation’s entire marketing operation relies on data, migrating to a new solution can be incredibly painful and time-consuming. So, the sooner you switch to an ethical tool, the less of a headache the process will be. 

  The problem with Google Analytics

  Google Analytics (GA) is the most popular analytics platform in the world, but it’s a world away from being an ethical tool. Here’s why :

  You don’t have data ownership

  Google Analytics is attractive to businesses of all sizes because of its price. Everyone loves getting something for free, but there’s still a cost — your and your customers’ data.

  That’s because Google combines the data you collect with information from the millions of other websites it tracks to inform its advertising efforts. It may also use your data to train large language models like Gemini. 

  It has a rocky history with GDPR laws

  Google and EU regulators haven’t always got along. For example, the German Data Protection Authority is investigating 200,000 pending cases against websites using GA. The platform has also been banned and added back to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework several times over the past few years. 

  You can use GA to collect data about EU customers right now, but there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to do so in the future. 

  It requires a specific setup to remain compliant

  While you can currently use GA in a GDPR-compliant way — owing to its inclusion in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework — you have to set it up in a very specific way. That’s because the platform’s compliance depends on what data you collect, how you inform users and the level of consent you acquire. You’ll still need to include an extensive privacy policy on your website. 

  What does ethical web analytics look like ?

  An ethical web analytics solution should put user privacy first, ensure compliance with regulations like GDPR, give businesses 100% control of the data they collect and be completely transparent about data collection and storage practices. 

  

  100% data ownership

  You don’t fully control customer data when you use Google Analytics. The search giant uses your data for its own advertising purposes and may also use it to train large language models like Gemini. 

  When you choose an ethical web analytics alternative like Matomo, you can ensure you completely own your data.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Respects user privacy

  It’s possible to track and measure user behaviour without collecting personally identifiable information (PII). Just look at the ethical web analytics tools we’ve reviewed below. 

  These platforms respect user privacy and conform to strict privacy regulations like GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA by incorporating some or all of the following features :

  • Opt-out mechanisms to let users refuse tracking
  • IP addresses anonymisation and other data anonymisation techniques
  • DoNotTrack options
  • Shorter expiration dates for tracking cookies

  In Matomo’s case, it’s all of the above. Better still, you can check our privacy credentials yourself. Our software’s source code is open source on GitHub and accessible to anyone at any time. 

  Compliant with government regulations

  While Google’s history with data regulations is tumultuous, an ethical web analytics platform should follow even the strictest privacy laws, including GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, LGPD and PECR.

  But why stop there ? Matomo has been approved by the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) as one of the few web analytics tools that French sites can use to collect data without tracking consent. So you don’t need an annoying consent banner popping up on your website anymore. 

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Complete transparency 

  Ethical web analytics tools will be upfront about their data collection practices, whether that’s in the U.S., EU, or on your own private servers. Look for a solution that refrains from collecting personally identifiable information, shows where data is stored, and lets you alter tracking methods to increase privacy even further. 

  Some solutions, like Matomo, will increase transparency further by providing open source software. Anyone can find our source code on GitHub to see exactly how our platform tracks and stores user data. This means our code is regularly examined and reviewed by a community of developers, making it more secure, too.

  Ethical web analytics solutions

  There are several options for an ethical web analytics tool. We list three of the best providers below. 

  Matomo

  Matomo is an open source web analytics tool and privacy-focused Google Analytics alternative used by over one million sites globally. 

  

  Matomo is fully compliant with prominent global privacy regulations like GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA, meaning you never have to worry about collecting consent when tracking user behaviour. 

  The data you collect is completely accurate since Matomo doesn’t use data sampling and is 100% yours. We don’t share data with third parties but can prove it. Our product source code is publicly available on GitHub. As a community-led project, you can download and install it yourself for free. 

  With Matomo, you get a full range of web analytics capabilities and behavioural analytics. That includes your standard metrics (think visitors, traffic sources, bounce rates, etc.), advanced features to analyse user behaviour like A/B Testing, Form Analytics, Heatmaps and Session Recordings. 

  Migrating to Matomo is easy. You can even import historical Google Analytics data to generate meaningful insights immediately. 

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Fathom

  Fathom Analytics is a lightweight privacy-focused analytics solution that launched in 2018. It aims to be an easy-to-use Google Analytics alternative that doesn’t compromise privacy. 

  

  Like Matomo, Fathom complies with all major privacy regulations, including GDPR and CCPA. It also provides 100% accurate, unsampled reports and doesn’t share your data with third parties. 

  While Fathom provides fairly comprehensive analytics reports, it doesn’t have some of Matomo’s more advanced features. That includes e-commerce tracking, heatmaps, session recordings, and more. 

  Plausible

  Plausible Analytics is another open source Google Analytics alternative that was built and hosted in the EU. 

  

  Launched in 2019, Plausible is a newer player in the privacy-focused analytics market. Still, its ultra-lightweight script makes it an attractive option for organisations that prioritise speed over everything else. 

  Like Matomo and Fathom, Plausible is GDPR and CCPA-compliant by design. Nor is there any cap on the amount of data you collect or any debate over whether the data is accurate (Plausible doesn’t use data sampling) or who owns the data (you do). 

  Matomo makes it easy to migrate to an ethical web analytics alternative

  There’s no reason to put your users’ privacy at risk, especially when there are so many benefits to choosing an ethical tool. Whether you want to avoid fines, build trust with your customers, or simply know you’re doing the right thing, choosing a privacy-focused, ethical solution like Matomo is taking a massive step in the right direction. 

  Making the switch is easy, too. Matomo is one of the few options that lets you import historical Google Analytics data, so starting from scratch is unnecessary. 

  Get started today by trying Matomo for free for 21-days. No credit card required. 

  Try Matomo for Free

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

  
  

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  Your information will be used to create an account on our cloud service. For more information please consult our privacy policy.
  
  
  

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• 6 Crucial Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimisation

  26 février 2024, par Erin

  Whether investing time or money in marketing, you want the best return on your investment. You want to get as many customers as possible with your budget and resources.

  That’s what conversion rate optimisation (CRO) aims to do. But how does it help you achieve this major goal ? 

  This guide explores the concrete benefits of conversion rate optimisation and how they lead to more effective marketing and ROI. We’ll also introduce specific CRO best practices to help unlock these benefits.

  What is conversion rate optimisation ?

  Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the process of examining your website for improvements and creating tests to increase the number of visitors who take a desired action, like purchasing a product or submitting a form.

  The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a specific goal.

  

  In order to improve your conversion rate, you need to figure out :

  • Where your customers come from
  • How potential customers navigate or interact with your website
  • Where potential customers are likely to exit your site (or abandon carts)
  • What patterns drive valuable actions like sign-ups and sales

  From there, you can gradually implement changes that will drive more visitors to convert. That’s the essence of conversion rate optimisation.

  6 top benefits of conversion rate optimisation (and best practices to unlock them)

  Conversion rate optimisation can help you get more out of your campaigns without investing more. CRO helps you in these six ways :

  1. Understand your visitors (and customers) better

  The main goal of CRO is to boost conversions, but it’s more than that. In the process of improving conversion rates, you’ll also benefit by gaining deep insights into user behaviour, preferences, and needs. 

  Using web analytics, tests and behavioural analytics, CRO helps marketers shape their website to match what users need.

  Best practices for understanding your customer :

  First, analyse how visitors act with full context (the pages they view, how long they stay and more). 

  In Matomo, you can use the Users Flow report to understand how visitors navigate through your site. This will help you visualise and identify trends in the buyer’s journey.

  

  Then, you can dive deeper by defining and analysing journeys with Funnels. This shows you how many potential customers follow through each step in your defined journey and identify where you might have a leaky funnel. 

  

  In the above Funnel Report, nearly half of our visitors, just 44%, are moving forward in the buyer’s journey after landing on our scuba diving mask promotion page. With 56% of potential customers dropping off at this page, it’s a prime opportunity for optimising conversions.

  Think of Funnels as your map, and pages with high drop-off rates as valuable opportunities for improvement.

  Once you notice patterns, you can try to identify the why. Analyse the pages, do user testing and do your best to improve them.

  2. Deliver a better user experience

  A better understanding of your customers’ needs means you can deliver a better user experience.

  

  For example, if you notice many people spend more time than expected on a particular step in the sign-up process, you can work to streamline it.

  Best practices for improving your user experience : 

  To do this, you need to come up with testable hypotheses. Start by using Heatmaps and Session Recordings to visualise the user experience and understand where visitors are hesitating, experiencing points of frustration, and exiting. 

  You need to outline what drives certain patterns in behaviour — like cart abandonment for specific products, and what you think can fix them.

  

  Let’s look at an example. In the screenshot above, we used Matomo’s Heatmap feature to analyse user behaviour on our website. 

  Only 65% of visitors scroll down far enough to encounter our main call to action to “Write a Review.” This insight suggests a potential opportunity for optimisation, where we can focus efforts on encouraging more users to engage with this key element on our site.

  Once you’ve identified an area of improvement, you need to test the results of your proposed solution to the problem. The most common way to do this is with an A/B test. 

  This is a test where you create a new version of the problematic page, trying different titles, comparing long, and short copy, adding or removing images, testing variations of call-to-action buttons and more. Then, you compare the results — the conversion rate — against the original. With Matomo’s A/B Testing feature, you can easily split traffic between the original and one or more variations.

  

  In the example above from Matomo, we can see that testing different header sizes on a page revealed that the wider header led to a higher conversion rate of 47%, compared to the original rate of 35% and the smaller header’s 36%.

  Matomo’s report also analyses the “statistical significance” of the difference in results. Essentially, this is the likelihood that the difference comes from the changes you made in the variation. With a small sample size, random patterns (like one page receiving more organic search visits) can cause the differences.

  If you see a significant change over a larger sample size, you can be fairly certain that the difference is meaningful. And that’s exactly what a high statistical significance rating indicates in Matomo. 

  Once a winner is identified, you can apply the change and start a new experiment. 

  3. Create a culture of data-driven decision-making

  Marketers can no longer afford to rely on guesswork or gamble away budgets and resources. In our digital age, you must use data to get ahead of the competition. In 2021, 65% of business leaders agreed that decisions were getting more complex.

  CRO is a great way to start a company-wide focus on data-driven decision-making. 

  Best practices to start a data-driven culture :
  

  Don’t only test “hunches” or “best practices” — look at the data. Figure out the patterns that highlight how different types of visitors interact with your site.

  Try to answer these questions :

  • How do our most valuable customers interact with our site before purchasing ?
  • How do potential customers who abandon their carts act ?
  • Where do our most valuable customers come from ?

  Moreover, it’s key to democratise insights by providing multiple team members access to information, fostering informed decision-making company-wide.

  4. Lower your acquisition costs and get higher ROI from all marketing efforts

  Once you make meaningful optimisations, CRO can help you lower customer acquisition costs (CAC). Getting new customers through advertising will be cheaper.

  As a result, you’ll get a better return on investment (ROI) on all your campaigns. Every ad and dollar invested will get you closer to a new customer than before. That’s the bottom line of CRO.

  Best practices to lower your CAC (customer acquisition costs) through CRO adjustments :

  The easiest way to lower acquisition costs is to understand where your customers come from. Use marketing attribution to track the results of your campaigns, revealing how each touchpoint contributes to conversions and revenue over time, beyond just last-click attribution.

  You can then compare the number of conversions to the marketing costs of each channel, to get a channel-specific breakdown of CAC.

  This performance overview can help you quickly prioritise the best value channels and ads, lowering your CAC. But these are only surface-level insights. 

  You can also further lower CAC by optimising the pages these campaigns send visitors to. Start with a deep dive into your landing pages using features like Matomo’s Session Recordings or Heatmaps.

  They can help you identify issues with an unengaging user experience or content. Using these insights, you can create A/B tests, where you implement a new page that replaces problematic headlines, buttons, copy, or visuals.

  

  When a test shows a statistically significant improvement in conversion rates, implement the new version. Repeat this over time, and you can increase your conversion rates significantly, getting more customers with the same spend. This will reduce your customer acquisition costs, and help your company grow faster without increasing your ad budget.

  5. Improve your average order value (AOV) and customer lifetime value (CLV)

  CRO isn’t only about increasing the number of customers you convert. If you adapt your approach, you can also use it to increase the revenue from each customer you bring in. 

  But you can’t do that by only tracking conversion rates, you also need to track exactly what your customers buy.

  If you only blindly optimise for CAC, you even risk lowering your CLV and the overall profitability of your campaigns. (For example, if you focus on Facebook Ads with a $6 CAC, but an average CLV of $50, over Google Ads with a $12 CAC, but a $100 CLV.)

  Best practices to track and improve CLV :

  First, integrate your analytics platform with your e-commerce (B2C) or your CRM (B2B). This will help you get a more holistic view of your customers. You don’t want the data to stop at “converted.” You want to be able to dive deep into the patterns of high-value customers.

  The sales report in Matomo’s ecommerce analytics makes it easy to break down average order value by channels, campaigns, and specific ads.

  

  In the report above, we can see that search engines drive customers who spend significantly more, on average, than social networks — $241 vs. $184. But social networks drive a higher volume of customers and more revenue.

  To figure out which channel to focus on, you need to see how the CAC compares to the AOV (or CLV for B2B customers). Let’s say the CAC of social networks is $50, while the search engine CAC is $65. Search engine customers are more profitable — $176 vs. $134. So you may want to adjust some more budget to that channel.

  To put it simply :

  Profit per customer = AOV (or CLV) – CAC

  Example :

  • Profit per customer for social networks = $184 – $50 = $134
  • Profit per customer for search engines = $241 – $65 = $176

  You can also try to A/B test changes that may increase the AOV, like creating a product bundle and recommending it on specific sales pages.

  An improvement in CLV will make your campaigns more profitable, and help stretch your advertising budget even further.

  6. Improve your content and SEO rankings

  A valuable side-effect of focusing on CRO metrics and analyses is that it can boost your SEO rankings. 

  How ? 

  CRO helps you improve the user experience of your website. That’s a key signal Google (and other search engines) care about when ranking webpages. 

  

  For example, Google’s algorithm considers “dwell time,” AKA how long a user stays on your page. If many users quickly return to the results page and click another result, that’s a bad sign. But if most people stay on your site for a while (or don’t return to Google at all), Google thinks your page gives the user their answer.

  As a result, Google will improve your website’s ranking in the search results.

  Best practices to make the most of CRO when it comes to SEO :

  Use A/B Testing, Heatmaps, and Session Recordings to run experiments and understand user behaviour. Test changes to headlines, page layout, imagery and more to see how it impacts the user experience. You can even experiment with completely changing the content on a page, like substituting an introduction.

  Bring your CRO-testing mindset to important pages that aren’t ranking well to improve metrics like dwell time.

  Start optimising your conversion rate today

  As you’ve seen, enjoying the benefits of CRO heavily relies on the data from a reliable web analytics solution. 

  But in an increasingly privacy-conscious world (just look at the timeline of GDPR updates and fines), you must tread carefully. One of the dilemmas that marketing managers face today is whether to prioritise data quality or privacy (and regulations).

  With Matomo, you don’t have to choose. Matomo values both data quality and privacy, adhering to stringent privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA.

  Unlike other web analytics, Matomo doesn’t sample data or use AI and machine learning to fill data gaps. Plus, you can track without annoying visitors with a cookie consent banner – so you capture 100% of traffic while respecting user privacy (excluding in Germany and UK).

  And as you’ve already seen above, you’ll still get plenty of reports and insights to drive your CRO efforts. With User Flows, Funnels, Session Recordings, Form Analytics, and Heatmaps, you can immediately find insights to improve your bottom line.

  And our built-in A/B testing feature will help you test your hypotheses and drive reliable progress. If you’re ready to reliably optimise conversion rates (with accuracy and without privacy concerns), try Matomo for free for 21 days. No credit card required.

  Try Matomo for Free

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

  
  

  Your email address
  

  Your website address
  

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• 9 Form Optimisation Tips to Convert More Visitors

  15 février 2024, par Erin

  Forms might seem boring — that is, until you realise how powerful they are.

  No forms mean no leads.

  No leads mean no sales.

  No sales means you’ll run out of business.

  So, what do you do ?

  Optimise forms to land more leads.

  They’re a critical part of the sales funnel.

  Forms have many different purposes and can be used to :

  • Contact a company
  • Sign up for a newsletter
  • Request a demo
  • Start a free trial
  • And more

  If you want to get more leads (and ultimately more sales), then you need to optimise your forms.

  This guide will show you exactly how to do that (so you can start getting more conversions today). 

  What is form optimisation ?

  Before we dive into form optimisation, let’s back up a bit.

  Form conversion is our primary focus.

  Your form conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who submit a form divided by the total number of visitors who started the form times one hundred.

  For example, if 5,000 people started filling out your form this month and 350 submitted the form, the conversion rate would be : 

  350 / 5,000 x 100 = 7%

  So, what’s form optimisation ?

  

  It’s simply improving your forms to increase conversion rates.

  For most people, form conversion is all about increasing leads.

  Before you begin optimising your forms, it’s important you understand what’s good (and what’s not good) when it comes to form conversions.

  The average form conversion rate across all industries is 2.9%.

  This means you should expect about 3 out of every 100 visitors who start your form to submit it.

  If your form conversion is lower — or hovering around this number — then it’s important to start optimising now.

  With Matomo, you can track your form conversions with Matomo Form Analytics. Gain powerful insights into how your visitors interact with your forms with our intuitive dashboard.

  Why it’s important to optimise your forms

  Most people hear the word “forms” and think it’s boring.

  But forms are the doorway to leads.

  If you want to generate more sales, then you need to generate great forms.

  Here are five reasons you need to optimise your forms today :

  

  1. Improve conversions

  Form optimisation is really just conversion optimisation.

  But, instead of optimising and improving your site to directly improve sales conversions, you’re increasing lead conversions.

  Every smart website owner uses forms to draw people in further.

  The reality is that most of your website visitors will never return to your site.

  This means you need to do everything you can to grab their contact information so you can continue marketing to them day in and day out.

  Otherwise, you’ll lose them forever.

  When you know how to optimise your forms, you’ll be able to get a higher percentage of form viewers to fill it out.

  Higher conversions mean you get more leads, more customers, and ultimately more revenue.

  2. Capture more leads

  When you can increase your form conversion rate from 1% to 2%, it may seem insignificant.

  What’s a measly percentage point in conversions ?

  It’s a lot.

  When you’re dealing with traffic in the tens or hundreds of thousands each month, an increase in conversion rate by a whole percentile is massive.

  Let’s say you take your conversion rate from 2% to 3% on your form, and you have 70,000 visitors view the form each month.

  Well, if 1,400 people used to sign up to your email list each month at a 2% conversion rate, then at a 3% conversion rate, you’d get 2,100 new email signups every month.

  That’s a major difference.

  When you can improve your signup forms, you improve your lead generation (which is conversion rate optimisation). And the more leads you have, the more sales you’ll make in the long run.

  3. Get the most out of your traffic

  If your forms don’t perform well, then you’re wasting your time (and your traffic).

  By analysing your form data, you can quickly see what’s working and what’s not so you can optimise and improve the user experience (and your forms).

  For most people, this means getting more form viewers to fill out the form with their email and name.

  If 50,000 people visit your site each month, but only 1% of them fill out your form, you’re only getting 500 email signups per month.

  Rather than paying money to generate more traffic, why not just work on improving your website by implementing a better form ?

  If you can increase your form conversion rate to 2%, you will immediately go from 500 new subscribers per month to 1,000 per month.

  4. Spend less on acquisition

  If you’re able to get more form signups without having to generate more traffic, you just solved a pricey problem : acquisition costs.

  If you can now get 1,000 of your 50,000 visitors to sign up to your email list through a better form, then you doubled your signups.

  But that’s not all. You just cut your acquisition costs in half.

  If you spend $2,000 per month on acquisition but you’re able to get twice as many leads, then your acquisition costs are at 50% of what they used to be.

  This means you can pay the same amount but get twice as many leads.

  Or, you can pour even more money into acquisition since it’s now twice as effective so you can fuel growth even more.

  5. Grow revenue

  Forms generate revenue. It may not be direct (although, in some cases, it is). 

  But, forms will lead to sales.

  By placing optimised forms throughout your website at the right places, you will be able to capture a percentage of your visitors as leads, which means you’ll eventually make more sales.

  13 tips to optimise your forms for more conversions

  Now that you know what forms can do and why they’re important to grow your business, it’s time to dive into the best practices.

  Follow these 13 tips to ensure you’re getting the most out of your forms :

  

  1. Set form goals

  Your forms are hopeless without a goal.

  Before you set up a form on your website, ask yourself, “What am I trying to accomplish with this form ?”

  It could be :

  • Encouraging customers to reach out through a contact form
  • To get visitors to leave feedback on your product/service
  • Convert visitors into leads by giving you their email

  No matter what your goal is, make sure you’re clear on it ; otherwise, you won’t be as targeted and specific with your forms.

  Matomo Goals helps you set specific objectives for your marketing campaigns so you’re able to easily track conversions. Whether you’re looking to capture feedback or generate leads, you can leverage Matomo to see what’s working and what’s not in seconds.

  2. Remove or improve fields with high average time spent and high drop-off rates

  Delving into your Form Analytics provides invaluable insights into individual field performance. A crucial metric to focus on is the Average Time Spent. 

  If a field stands out with a significantly higher average time spent and experiences a high drop-off rate compared to others in the form, it’s a clear indicator that it’s causing frustration or confusion for your visitors.

  To address this, consider improving the field by converting it into a dropdown menu for easier completion or providing helpful text prompts. Alternatively, if the field isn’t essential, you might opt to remove it altogether.

  When you cut down on time spent and drop-offs, you’ll see your conversion rates go up.

  

  Here’s a standout example from Matomo’s Form Analytics feature : the “Overview of your needs” field is taking on average 1 minute and 37 seconds to complete. 

  To streamline this, we might want to consider a simple fix like converting it into a dropdown menu. This change would offer visitors a clearer and quicker way to select from options.

  

  Likewise, we observe that the “Overview of your needs” field experiences the highest drop-off rate, totaling 1,732 drop-offs. 

  With Form Analytics, it becomes clear what is needed to optimise forms and increase conversions.

  Try Matomo for Free

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  3. Start with the CTA

  When crafting and optimising your forms, you need to start with the end in mind. That’s why you need to start with your business goals.

  What are you trying to do with this form ? If you want to capture more emails, then make sure that’s very clear with the call to action (CTA).

  Start building your form by beginning with the CTA.

  For example : “Sign Up Now.”

  Once you have the action you want your potential customers to take, place it on the form. Then, you can work towards crafting the rest of the form.

  4. Put it above the fold

  If your visitors can’t find your form, they won’t fill it out. It’s plain and simple.

  You need to make sure your form is visible above the fold. This is the part of the screen that’s visible to your visitors once they land on your site (without needing to scroll down).

  Always remember to test this out on both desktop and mobile to ensure anyone (using laptops or a mobile device) will see your form upon landing on your site or page.

  Don’t forget about your mobile users. More people view mobile forms than desktop forms. 

  5. Put a CTA in the headline

  Your form needs to be clear.

  You have 1-3 seconds to communicate with your site visitors what your form is all about.

  For example, if you’re trying to get email signups with a lead magnet, then tell them the benefit quickly and concisely with a CTA in the headline, like this one :

  “Subscribe to Save 10% On Your Next Order”

  This is a great example of a headline-CTA combo that tells the visitor what to do and what they get out of it.

  Matomo’s behaviour analytics features like Session Recordings let you see where visitors are clicking and spending time. For example, if people are reading the headline, but not scrolling down to read the form, it’s probably a sign you need to test a different headline.

  6. Ensure you have the right fields

  Your form fields matter.

  What information are you trying to capture from your audience ?

  One beginner mistake people make is requiring too much information and including many fields in a form.

  You want to get as much data on your audience as possible, right ? Wrong.

  If you ask for too much information, people won’t fill it out, and it will harm the user experience. You need to make it super easy.

  If you want more emails to grow your list, then stick with someone’s email (and possibly their name as well). One line for a name. One line for an email address. Keep it simple.

  If you’re after SMS as well, don’t include it on the form. Instead, create a two-step form that pops up an SMS form after someone fills out the email form.

  Multi-step forms enable you to capture those emails easily (and still get a percentage to fill out the second form) without making it seem like too much work for your audience.

  Another path is to include optional fields (that users don’t have to fill out to click submit).

  Just keep in mind that shorter forms perform better than longer ones.

  If you make them too long, it feels like work for the user and will lead to lower completion rates.

  7. Always capture email address

  If you’re unsure of what information to capture (i.e. name, number, email, occupation, age, etc.), always stick to email.

  Email is used by over 4 billion people every single day, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

  When determining which fields to include, start with email.

  

  8. Test different buttons and copy

  You need to track your form performance if you want to get the best conversions.

  One of the best form elements to start testing is your button copy.

  In most cases, form completion buttons will have the word “submit” on them.

  But you don’t have to stick with this word.

  You can (and should) experiment with different submit button copy.

  Here are a few examples of replacement words for your action button :

  • Complete
  • Sign Up
  • Join now
  • Get started

  Remember to experiment with your action button. Try a different copy. Just keep it short.

  You can also try A/B testing your form by experimenting with different colours, copy, and more.

  

  In the example above from Matomo’s A/B testing feature, we found that changing the wording of our call to action made a big difference. The new “Apply Now” button performed much better, with a 3.6% conversion rate compared to just 1.7% for the original one.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

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  9. Test static vs. popup

  There are various types of online forms.

  The most common is the static form that just sits in one place and is always there.

  Another popular form type is the popup.

  This is where a form will appear based on a certain trigger like :

  • A certain amount of time on page
  • A certain distance scrolling down the page
  • If someone is a new or returning visitor

  Depending on the form software you use, you may be able to add conditional logic.

  Start tracking your form conversions

  Form optimisation is all about conversion rate optimisation.

  If you want to increase your conversions and generate more revenue, then you need to test out different forms and know how to optimise them.

  With Matomo, you can easily track, manage, and A/B test your forms so you can improve your conversions. 

  Try Matomo free for 21 days. No credit card required.

  Try Matomo for Free

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

  
  

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