Advanced Google Analytics Form Submission Tracking

Advanced form field tracking in new Google Analytics 4 reporting to measure and improve form conversion (with examples). Track individual form field drop-off.

Basic Form Submission Tracking in Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 is significantly different from Google Analytics Universal Analytics. Still, one of the key improvements in GA 4 is new reports, particularly the new funnel reports which were previously limited to paying Google Analytics 360 customers. This report creates a funnel view of 2 or more steps and since Google Analytics 4 treats all calls as events now, this allows combining pageview and tracking events. 

Looking at example Google Analytics form data from my contact form with 6 required fields shows a 16.13% overall form conversion rate based on form views against total confirmation page views. This is interesting, but previous Google Analytics Universal Analytics Goal reporting provided the same level of insight when including form steps. 50 users successfully submitted the form (out of 310) but what happened to the 260 users who abandoned the form?

Better Form Submission Tracking - Measuring Drop-Off

Using custom Google Analytics 4 events on form fields or submit buttons paints a better picture of the overall form performance and conversion rate. If you use built-in tracking in Google Analytics 4 you can automatically track a "form start" metric that tracks the first field completed. You can also measure "Form Submit Attempt" by adding click tracking to your primary conversion button.

This view shows 67.74% of page visitors started filling out the form (compared to the 16.13% overall form conversion rate). However, there's a significant drop-off between the total users who started the form by filling out their first name (210 users) and users who successfully submitted the form (50 users). 

Advanced Form Tracking With Field Drop-Off Tracking

Taking the above tracking further and including individual form field tracking exposes much more information on form activity, including which fields drive the most drop-off. Every form field added impacts overall form CR% and exposing form conversion rate at this level of detail makes it much easier to benchmark performance and improve forms via conversion rate optimization. 

The Completion rate column shows the relative conversion rate of that field (ie. 99.5% of users who enter a first name will also enter a second name). The Abandonments column shows the total users who never complete the following step, which the Abandonment rate column tracks relative to the total users. For example, in the chart below 100 users (out of 310 total form visitors) failed to even start the form (fill out first name). 100/310 = 32.26% which is the shown abandonment rate.

There are some interesting learnings from the above data:

• The phone field has the highest individual field drop-off, with 39 users failing to fill out the phone field that filled in the email field.
  • This is expected, as number fields like phone, zip code, and credit card number have the highest form abandonment rate.
• Form Submit Attempts are almost 3x higher than Form Submit Success.
  • This may indicate a potential form formatting or usability issue, such as the required format or number of digits for a phone field that may be unclear to users. 

Optimizing Forms Based on Google Analytics Form Submission Tracking

I combined the above quantitative data with qualitative data from Microsoft Clarity Session Recording which helped explain the Form Submit Attempt and Form Submit Success gap. Many users left the Message field ("How Can I Help You?") blank and tried to submit the form. Ultimately, making this field optional is the best solution to improving overall form conversion rate.