Conversion Optimization: Tracking Form Validation Errors with Google Analytics

After all the effort of getting your users interested in your product/service, the last thing you want is for them to exit your site because form validations were an afterthought.

Losing Conversions from Indian Street Addresses

For the last few weeks at Learnhub I’ve been trying to optimize the conversion rate of our school application form. This form is lengthy compared to most and we required that potential students entered their home address.

As an experiment, we hooked up Google Analytics to track every time a validation error happened.

We were surprised to discovered that 20% of users failed to enter their street address properly and half of those users then exited the site. This was a big warning sign that our validations need improvement.

So we began to look into why this is happening in more detail.

We realized that our indian users were skipping the address not because they didn’t want to share it but because Indian addresses are really complicated.

In India, especially in smaller towns, street address’s are not as established as other parts of the world. If they did know it, it frequently looked like this: 83, LAXMI APPT., SEC-5, PLOT NO-27/8, ROHINI.

Asking someone to type that out is a usability nightmare.

From this data we now had a new starting point for improving conversions: by making the process of entering address easier or by making the field optional.

How Did We Track Validation Errors with Google Analytics?

In Google Analytics they have an awesome feature called event tracking that can be easily trigger by on-page javascript.

Our site was developed with Rails so when a field fails to validate, it automatically gets wrapped in a div.

So we wrote up a tiny script that:

1. scans the page for any divs with fieldWithErrors
2. grabs the ID of the form field
3. sends an event to Google Analytics with the label “Validation Error” and the value as the fields ID

The script (prototype):

With this data you can see see how many exited the form, what country they are from, validations per user, etc.

Fixing the Problem Fields

It may be beneficial to minimize the required fields to get that initial commitment.

Just like the old sales adage, if you can get the customer to say yes the first time it will be easier to get them to say yes later on for the bigger commitment.

Making fields a requirement is always a tough balance between hurting the forms usability and getting the information you want.

If you do decided to skip the tough questions early on, a process could be set up to get the needed information later on from something like a follow-up email or secondary form.

Either way it helps to have the analytics data to back it up those decisions.

10 Inspiring SaaS Website Designs

I have been researching SaaS companies recently and wanted to a share few well designed sites I’ve had bookmarked. These sites are usually the first thing their customers sees, but many companies I came across overlooked the design of their sites so here are a few that really stood out.

Why: It looks like the design of SquareSpace is it’s biggest selling point. The site has an intro  video front and center with large screenshots of the software taking up most of the page. That doesn’t seem to be a bad thing either. (I like dark designs for some reason).
Best Feature: Pricing page, it’s very simple and focuses on customer objections at the bottom.

Why: It takes about 3 seconds to figure out what Vertical response is. Too many SaaS sites are ambiguous when it comes to explaining what their product does. The copy on the site is interesting and gets to the point.
Best Feature: Landing page right at the beginning to converts visitors to leads.

Why: About a month ago the home page of Jives site mainly had a pointless 3d animation of their logo and little information. They recently updated the home page to focus back on the products, which is a nice improvement.
Best Feature: Customers page, nothing builds trust better then a list of well-known customers and Jive has no shortage of them.

Why: They are selling a unique type of software that they communicate well. There is very little clutter and they don’t try to oversell.
Best Feature: Product Tour, they offer a simple walk through of all the features with a nice video.

Why: The colorful front page stands out and should appeal to their target market, web designers. They do a good job of communicating the simplicity of the product and pricing over the exist email marketing companies.
Best Feature: Content Focus, everything on the site is focused on its target market from its home page to the articles helping developers sell email services to clients.

Why: Although, not the most usable site ever created, the design is unique and memorable.
Best Feature: 3d-Chart, I have seen this type of chart used before, but Helpstream did it well.

Why: They sell multiple complex products to the enterprise market. Naturally a lot of the site is content heavy but it is presented in a welcoming way. What I found interesting was how they divided content into the different areas.
Best Feature: Usage stats on the front page. With 2.5 million users it’s clearly proven there is value in the software.

Why: Another site with a customer base its not afraid to promote. The product descriptions are also clear and well written. No endless feature lists or lengthy copy.
Best Feature: Testimonial Videos, gives their customers a face not just a logo.

Why: They focus on the most positive aspect of the company: the founding team behind the software. This builds credibility and focuses less on the product, which is too new and unproven.
Best Feature: About Page, they clearly show the quality of the management team.

Why: The first thing that stands out with Zen Desks site is the pricing is very prevalent on the home page. Too many business software sites hide their pricing deep in the site or require your phone number to have a sales rep call. Zen Desk is not afraid to show the price, which helps customers compare it to other products and figure out whether or not it is suited for their business.
Best Feature: Customer Testimonials speak for themselves.

Building Enterprise Software for Employees Not Just Managers

There are many enterprise applications built for one reason: to be sold to managers. Too often they don’t factor in what the rest of the employees, who use the software everyday might want.

I came across an article Groupware Bad about how Netscape lost direction by trying to build “Groupware” (boring social tools) and not what its original target market really wanted (help getting laid). The end result was a sub-par product.

In order to sell to the enterprise market Netscape began focusing on what managers wanted to buy and less on what people wanted to use.

Isaac Schlueter made the same connection to Redux whose social recommendation site is focused on the technology behind it and not on what their users want to use.

With most enterprise applications design comes second.

If managers are selecting the software for their employees to use it’s easy to lose focus on what the end user really wants.

What end ups happening is similar to when a parent takes their kids out to a movie. The parent chooses a movie they wanted to see because it’s educational for the kids. Just like the kids, the employees don’t take full advantage of the opportunity, using it only when forced to. This is because during its inception the companies focus was on the managers checklist of requirements and not on benefiting the end-user,

This presents a challenge for anyone building enterprise software. You can either build an end user focused application that the employees enjoy using. Or build something with a feature list that lets managers sleep easy at night. With the first, it would be a much harder sell to management. With the latter, the employee sees it as just another way for the management to get every ounce of productivity out of their 40-hour weeks.

I think its possible to do both (in the same way Pixar DreamWorks figured out how to make Shrek entertaining for children AND the parents).

Design for both sides.

Why not include something the employees can benefit from?

• Spending less time doing menial tasks to satisfy management i.e. paper work and reports.
• Making their contributions to the company more visible
• Spending less time in meetings

They might not sound very sexy but its the perspective that matters.

Why bother focus on the end-user when managers are the ones deciding?

When people talk about enterprise software its common to hear that the most important thing is selling the product, not the product itself.

Paul Graham said it best:

Enterprise software companies target upper management in the product development and marketing. But after the sale the software is often used by the entire organization. That’s what I think creates the separation. It’s all about the sale.

Although I believe enterprise software is maturing. An important driving factor is a growing tech-saavy younger generation. The employees who lived through first generation of business software are rising through management and are a much more knowledgeable consumer then their predecessors.

Hopefully, the focus will come back to what’s really important: the product… not how it’s sold.