What are form metrics?
Form metrics are the data points that measure how visitors interact with your sign-up forms, from views and submissions to engagement and downstream activity. These metrics show whether your forms capture attention and encourage visitors to subscribe, as well as how those interactions relate to later behavior.
General website analytics track traffic, but form metrics focus specifically on the performance of your opt-in experiences. They reveal how many people see your forms, how many engage with each step, where drop-offs occur, and what happens after someone submits. This level of detail helps you understand the effectiveness of your list-building efforts.
Benefits of form metrics
Monitoring form metrics offers several practical advantages for your business and your customers, including:
- Reduced friction in the sign-up experience: When you understand where visitors hesitate, you know which parts of your forms aren’t doing their job. Your team can work on improving those specific parts of the sign-up experience, rather than making uninformed guesses.
- Faster iteration cycles: When you track form metrics consistently, the real-time insights make it easier to spot issues and test solutions quickly.
- List growth: Better form performance means more people are signing up for your marketing lists. That translates to a larger audience for your communication efforts.
- Richer context for personalization: If your forms include fields that collect zero-party data like customer birthdays or product preferences, improving your form performance means you’re collecting more data that will be valuable in future personalization efforts.
- Better customer experience across your site: Think of your sign-up forms as a testing ground for understanding what works for your customers. Tracking patterns in that smaller environment will result in learnings you can apply to other parts of your site as well.
Overall, form metrics reduce guesswork and help you create a smoother, more informative sign-up experience for your customers.
Key form metrics to track
Here are the most important form metrics to monitor:
- Form views: total number of times a form is viewed by site visitors (this metric does not count unique viewers or views of a form's teaser)
- Submit rate: total form submissions divided by the total number of form views
- Submits: total count of form submissions
- Engagement rate: percentage of visitors who interact with at least one field in a form
- Step-by-step completion: a funnel view for multi-step forms that shows how many visitors complete each step
- Total revenue: the amount of revenue attributed to subscribers who came through a specific form within a defined lookback window
- Average order value (AOV): the average purchase amount from customers who subscribed through a form
- Orders: the number of purchases attributed to a form
How to use form metrics to improve performance
Form metrics are only valuable if you act on them. Here’s how to turn your forms data into better sign-up experiences:
1. Identify drop-off points
Review your multi-step form funnel to see where people are dropping off. If you lose 40% of visitors between step one and step two, for example, focus your optimization efforts there. Consider simplifying the form, reducing the number of fields, or making your value proposition clearer.
2. Compare form variations with A/B testing
Run A/B tests on forms to compare different form designs, copy, offers, or display timing and determine what results in the best submission rates. Always test one variable at a time, and make sure you look for statistical significance before declaring a winner.
3. Use AI to improve form performance
If your form metrics reveal declining submission rates, enlist the help of AI. Forms display optimization makes your list growth more efficient by using AI to test multiple versions of your form and find the highest-converting display time. Then, AI automatically selects the winning version and sets that form live.
4. Connect forms to downstream behavior
Analyze what happens after someone signs up to understand the full impact of your forms. Tracking things like AOV, number of orders, and revenue can help you see which forms align with higher-intent visitors, even if they collect fewer submissions.
5. Benchmark against peers
Use industry benchmarks to compare your form metrics to brands like yours and understand how your forms perform in comparison. If yours are performing significantly below average, look for room for improvement. If they’re performing above average, focus on scaling what works.
Ready to see how your forms perform? Get started with Klaviyo and start optimizing your sign-up forms today.