Track form performance with Analytics

Enterprise plan 

Looking for information on Google Analytics? See Add Google Analytics to your forms.

You’ve published your form and the responses are coming in. In this section, you’ll learn how to start analyzing them through the Analytics screen.

To see key stats about the responses to your form, open it from Forms and go to the Analytics screen. 

Here you can see how many responses have been submitted to your form, the average time taken, and the completion rate. If your form has a workflow, you can also get an overview of it's progress through that workflow.  

Filter each of these metrics by Date range, Version, and Device by using the drop-downs available.

Responses

The responses metric tracks form responses. Select it to view a graph of your responses over time. Hover over this graph see the exact number of responses for specific dates.

Remember that you can filter this graph with the date range, form version and devices filters to get a better idea of how your responses are coming in.  

Average time taken

The average time taken metric measures the time respondents are taking to complete your forms, and sections within forms. Use this metric to get an idea of where respondents might be getting stuck on particular questions, and where your forms can be streamlined.

Select this metric to view a graph of the average time respondents have taken to complete your form. Hover over the graph see the averages for specific dates. Use the Form and Section buttons to view this graph for the whole form, or individual sections. 

Below the average time graph, you’ll see the Respondent behaviour table. 

This table provides further detail on your respondents’ experience in terms of ‘back’ clicks, and ‘save’ clicks. These are presented as an average for your entire form, as well as averages per section.

Back clicks

This is the average number of times respondents click the ‘back’ button and get taken to the previous page of the form.

Respondents click ‘back’ for a variety of reasons, which can include checking or changing information they’ve read or entered in previous sections.  Think the average number of ‘backs’ for your form is high? You might want to:

• Group related fields into the same section

• Add tips, suggestions and other help text to sections that need it

• Set up a data connection to fill in answers for respondents using data you’ve already captured in previous sections

Average ‘save’ clicks per respondent

This is the average number of times respondents save their progress without submitting the form.

Respondents might click ‘save’ so they can go collect the information they need to complete the form, or because they get busy and need to come back later, or simply to reassure themselves that their progress has been recorded.

Think the average number of ‘saves’ for your form is high? You might want to:

• List all information needed to complete the form at the very start

• Collect only information you’re going to use, and that you haven’t already captured elsewhere

• Review your form to find other ways you might be able to shorten it

Completion rate

The completion rate metric displays a graph of the rate at which respondents complete your form. Select this metric to view a graph of completed versus abandoned forms. Hover over this graph to see the exact number of completions or abandonments for specific dates.

This is a particularly useful metric to filter by Form version and Device, so you can see if subsequent versions of your form are addressing respondent pain points, and whether some forms might be better tailored to mobile devices. 

Below this graph, you’ll see more detailed abandonment metrics.

Where respondents are struggling the most

Use the Where respondents are struggling the most graph to see where people are leaving your form unfinished in terms of form versions, and form sections. Use the Form and Section buttons to switch between these levels of detail and narrow down where people are running into problems.

Fields where respondents make the most errors

Use the Fields where respondents make the most errors list to better understand where people are failing to answer questions successfully. 

These are the fields respondents most frequently fail to complete successfully.

Errors can happen for a variety of reasons—the Type of error column gives you some guidance, but for some errors you might need to test the form yourself to uncover the likely cause.

Check the Fields where respondents most often abandon the form list to see whether there’s any correlation between the results.

Fields where respondents most often abandon the form

Use the Fields where respondents most often abandon the form list to better understand where people are giving up on your forms. 

These are the fields respondents most frequently last interact with before leaving the form.

Pay attention to the fields immediately after these ones, too—respondents might have encountered an issue there and left the form before interacting with the field at all.

Check the Fields where respondents make the most errors list to see whether there’s any correlation between the results. 

Workflow responses

The workflow responses metric tracks how responses are moving through your form's workflow.

If your form doesn't have a workflow, you won't see this metric.

Use this to check for bottlenecks in your review process, and make sure that respondents are using the right forms.

Workflow response breakdown

At the top of the workflow response tab, you'll see a workflow response breakdown. This tally indicates how many responses entered your form's workflow in the date range you've specified, how many were finalized, and how long the submission to finalization process took, on average.

It's important to note that the finalized tally can include forms that were submitted prior to the date range specified, so long as they were finalized within it.

Use this information to get a general idea of the health of your workflow - whether responses are being finalized in a timely manner, and whether your reviewers are keeping up with the number of submissions coming in. 

Where responses were finalized 

Next to the workflow response breakdown, you'll find Where responses were finalized. This metric lists all of the final steps in your response workflow, and what proportion of finalized responses ended in each step during the date range you've specified.

If you're finding that a lot of responses are finalized at a point that isn't useful to respondents (for example, being rejected on the grounds of eligibility), you can use this information to redirect respondents to a more relevant form, or make the form itself clearer.

Response snapshot

At the bottom of the response workflow tab, you'll find the response snapshot. This table lists all of the steps in your response workflow, alongside the following data:

Use this information to look for bottlenecks in your review process. While it's inevitable that some steps in your review process will take longer than others, if you're finding that the reviewers in a particular step are actioning less responses than they are receiving, it's a good idea to investigate further and add more reviewers. 

What's next?

• View form responses
• Manage saved responses

• Export response data

• How form responses are tallied