See where visitors give up on your forms

Forms are where lead sites win or lose: a contact form, a quote request, a sign-up or a newsletter box. Form analytics shows which field makes people stop, so you know what to change first.

There is nothing to set up. Varly finds the forms on every page that has the snippet, once visitors accept cookies.

The list of forms

Research → Forms shows every form visitors saw in the period, the busiest first:

• Saw it: visits where at least half of the form (or half the screen) was in view, or that started it.
• Started: visits that typed in a field or picked something.
• Sent: the share of starters who sent the form successfully.
• Most who gave up stopped at: the field most visitors who gave up touched last.

A form is named after its heading, or after its button ("Form with the “Send” button") when it has no heading. Varly counts per visit: a visitor who reloads the page and sends the form the second time counts once, as sent.

Use Device, Period and Filters at the top, or pick a saved segment, to see the numbers for one group of visitors.

One form, field by field

Click a form to open it.

From seeing the form to sending it shows the three steps: saw it, started it, sent it. Below it, Varly says how many visits gave up and how long sending took (the median: half of the visitors took longer). Click Watch visits that gave up to see their recordings.

Fields lists every field in the order of the form:

Column	What it means
Reached	Share of the visits that started the form and clicked or tabbed into this field.
Gave up here	Visits that started the form, didn't send it, and touched this field last. The highest number is red.
Time	Median time in the field, of the visits that reached it. Only the time the field had the cursor counts.
Corrected	Visits that deleted something they had typed, or came back and changed the field.
Left empty	Visits that left the field empty. A high number on a required field is worth a look.
Error shown	Visits that saw an error message at the field.

Click Watch who gave up here next to a field to see recordings of exactly those visits.

What to fix first

At the top of a form, Varly lists the biggest problems in the numbers, worst first. For example: "42% of the visitors who gave up stopped at “Phone”", or "“Postcode” shows an error to 18% of the visitors who reach it". Varly only points at a field once at least 20 visits started the form.

With an AI key, owners and editors can click Ask Oran what to fix. Oran reads the same numbers and suggests up to three changes, each with a way to check it. The button shows what it costs on your own AI key before you click. Oran only gets the numbers you see; he can't see what visitors typed. See AI key.

Compare devices, segments and test versions

Under Compare, pick:

• Devices: desktop, mobile and tablet side by side. Forms often lose many more people on phones.
• A saved segment: visits in one of your segments against everyone else.
• Test versions: when a running or finished A/B test reached this form, its versions side by side. A field that only one version has shows a dash in the other. This tells you where each version loses people; the test results still decide which version wins. For a personalization, the two groups are Personalized and Holdout (the visitors who keep the original).

Groups where fewer than 30 visits started the form are gray: too few to compare.

Use “Submitted a form” as a goal

Every successful form submission also counts as Submitted a form. Pick it as the goal of an A/B test (under Goals when you launch it) or as a step in a funnel. It works on every form on your site, with no code. Under the hood it is an event called varly_form_submitted, which you can also use in the API and the MCP server.

If you only want to count one specific form, send your own event with Varly.track or use its thank-you page as the goal.

How Varly decides a form was sent

The browser accepted the form (no required field empty, no wrong format), and then one of these happened:

• the next page loaded, or a single-page site moved to another page;
• the form disappeared or closed;
• the fields were cleared;
• a thank-you or success message appeared near the form;
• or, after 10 seconds, no error message appeared. Varly says on the form's page how many were counted this way.

When an error message appears after sending, it counts as an attempt that failed, not as sent. Varly recognizes the error messages of the browser and of most form tools (including WordPress form plugins, HubSpot and Bootstrap themes).

A form that sends visitors to a page on another website counts as sent as soon as the browser leaves for that page.

Privacy

• Varly never records what visitors type, not even how long it is. It only notes whether a field is empty or not, which field has the cursor, for how long, and whether an error message shows.
• Fields are named after their label, or their technical name when there is no label. Varly never uses the placeholder text inside a field, because it can hold an example name or email address.
• Labels follow the same hiding rules as recordings: with Strict, labels are hidden; Always hide and data-varly-mask hide them too.
• Varly skips checkout pages and thank-you pages after an order, search boxes, add-to-cart forms and every form that asks for card or bank details.
• Nothing is measured without consent. In privacy mode, visitors without consent who take part in a test only send Submitted a form for that test, nothing else. See Cookie consent.
• Form data is kept for 13 months, like other measurements.

For developers

• Add data-varly-block to a form or a field to leave it out completely.
• Add data-varly-mask to hide the label of a field or a whole form.
• Varly follows forms that appear later (pop-ups, steps of a multi-step form) and single-page sites.
• Forms are measured by a small extra script (about 6 kB) that only loads on pages with a form.
• Only real <form> elements are measured. Fields without a surrounding form aren't, for now.

Common problems

My form isn't in the list. Check that a visitor accepted cookies and saw at least half of it. Search boxes, add-to-cart forms, forms with card details and forms on checkout pages are left out on purpose. Fields without a <form> around them aren't measured yet.

A field shows a technical name like "input_3". The field has no label. Add a <label> to the field: that also helps visitors who use a screen reader.

Sent seems too low. If your form shows its thank-you message somewhere far from the form, Varly may not see it and waits 10 seconds instead. It still counts as sent when no error appears.