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• Statically built FFMPEG binary segmentation fault

  12 février 2020, par stevendesu

  I want to create a custom build of FFMPEG which rips out everything except for the ability to transmux HLS videos to MP4, and I need this build to be 100% static with no external dependencies

  I tried using the following configuration :

  ./configure \
  
      --extra-cflags='-static -static-libstdc++ -static-libgcc' \
  
      --extra-cxxflags='-static -static-libstdc++ -static-libgcc' \
  
      --extra-ldflags='-static -static-libstdc++ -static-libgcc' \
  
      --pkg-config-flags='--static' \
  
      --enable-static \
  
      --disable-shared \
  
      --disable-runtime-cpudetect \
  
      --disable-autodetect \
  
      --disable-ffplay \
  
      --disable-ffprobe \
  
      --disable-doc \
  
      --disable-avdevice \
  
      --disable-swresample \
  
      --disable-swscale \
  
      --disable-postproc \
  
      --disable-pthreads \
  
      --disable-w32threads \
  
      --disable-os2threads \
  
      --enable-network \
  
      --disable-dct \
  
      --disable-dwt \
  
      --disable-error-resilience \
  
      --disable-lsp \
  
      --disable-lzo \
  
      --disable-mdct \
  
      --disable-rdft \
  
      --disable-fft \
  
      --disable-faan \
  
      --disable-pixelutils \
  
      --disable-encoders \
  
      --disable-decoders \
  
      --disable-hwaccels \
  
      --disable-muxers \
  
      --enable-muxer=mov \
  
      --enable-muxer=mp4 \
  
      --disable-demuxers \
  
      --enable-demuxer=hls \
  
      --enable-demuxer=mpegts \
  
      --enable-demuxer=h264 \
  
      --enable-demuxer=aac \
  
      --disable-parsers \
  
      --enable-parser=h264 \
  
      --enable-parser=aac \
  
      --disable-bsfs \
  
      --disable-protocols \
  
      --enable-protocol=tcp \
  
      --enable-protocol=tls \
  
      --enable-protocol=http \
  
      --enable-protocol=https \
  
      --enable-protocol=hls \
  
      --disable-indevs \
  
      --disable-outdevs \
  
      --disable-devices \
  
      --disable-filters \
  
      --disable-alsa \
  
      --disable-appkit \
  
      --disable-avfoundation \
  
      --disable-bzlib \
  
      --disable-coreimage \
  
      --disable-iconv \
  
      --disable-lzma \
  
      --enable-openssl \
  
      --disable-sndio \
  
      --disable-sdl2 \
  
      --disable-securetransport \
  
      --disable-xlib \
  
      --disable-zlib \
  
      --disable-amf \
  
      --disable-audiotoolbox \
  
      --disable-cuda-llvm \
  
      --disable-cuvid \
  
      --disable-d3d11va \
  
      --disable-dxva2 \
  
      --disable-ffnvcodec \
  
      --disable-nvdec \
  
      --disable-nvenc \
  
      --disable-v4l2-m2m \
  
      --disable-vaapi \
  
      --disable-vdpau \
  
      --disable-videotoolbox \
  
      --disable-debug

  This looked about like what I wanted :

  install prefix            /usr/local
  
  source path               .
  
  C compiler                gcc
  
  C library                 glibc
  
  ARCH                      x86 (generic)
  
  big-endian                no
  
  runtime cpu detection     no
  
  standalone assembly       yes
  
  x86 assembler             nasm
  
  MMX enabled               yes
  
  MMXEXT enabled            yes
  
  3DNow! enabled            yes
  
  3DNow! extended enabled   yes
  
  SSE enabled               yes
  
  SSSE3 enabled             yes
  
  AESNI enabled             yes
  
  AVX enabled               yes
  
  AVX2 enabled              yes
  
  AVX-512 enabled           yes
  
  XOP enabled               yes
  
  FMA3 enabled              yes
  
  FMA4 enabled              yes
  
  i686 features enabled     yes
  
  CMOV is fast              yes
  
  EBX available             yes
  
  EBP available             yes
  
  debug symbols             no
  
  strip symbols             yes
  
  optimize for size         no
  
  optimizations             yes
  
  static                    yes
  
  shared                    no
  
  postprocessing support    no
  
  network support           yes
  
  threading support         no
  
  safe bitstream reader     yes
  
  texi2html enabled         no
  
  perl enabled              yes
  
  pod2man enabled           yes
  
  makeinfo enabled          no
  
  makeinfo supports HTML    no
  
  
  
  External libraries:
  
  openssl
  
  
  
  External libraries providing hardware acceleration:
  
  
  
  Libraries:
  
  avcodec                 avfilter                avformat                avutil
  
  
  
  Programs:
  
  ffmpeg
  
  
  
  Enabled decoders:
  
  
  
  Enabled encoders:
  
  
  
  Enabled hwaccels:
  
  
  
  Enabled parsers:
  
  aac                     h264
  
  
  
  Enabled demuxers:
  
  aac                     h264                    hls                     mpegts
  
  
  
  Enabled muxers:
  
  mov                     mp4
  
  
  
  Enabled protocols:
  
  hls                     http                    https                   tcp                     tls
  
  
  
  Enabled filters:
  
  aformat                 anull                   atrim                   format                  hflip                   null                    transpose               trim                    vflip
  
  
  
  Enabled bsfs:
  
  null
  
  
  
  Enabled indevs:
  
  
  
  Enabled outdevs:
  
  
  
  License: LGPL version 2.1 or later

  It included several filters which I won’t ever need or use, but these filters are pulled in automatically if you don’t specify --disable-avfilter, and specifying --disable-avfilter prevents the ffmpeg binary from being produced. So I’m stuck with those.

  Using these parameters and then running make, I received a binary that was about 5.9 MB in size and looked right :

  $> ldd ffmpeg
  
          not a dynamic executable

  But when I try to run it :

  $> ./ffmpeg -version
  
  Segmentation fault

  Using valgrind to try and inspect the cause of the segmentation fault :

  $> valgrind ./ffmpeg -version
  
  .... lots of stuff ...
  
  ==61362== Jump to the invalid address stated on the next line
  
  ==61362==    at 0x0: ???
  
  ==61362==    by 0x70BB1B: ??? (in /src/FFmpeg/ffmpeg)
  
  ==61362==    by 0x70B2E6: ??? (in /src/FFmpeg/ffmpeg)
  
  ==61362==    by 0x4033F9: ??? (in /src/FFmpeg/ffmpeg)
  
  ==61362==    by 0x1FFF000677: ???
  
  ==61362==  Address 0x0 is not stack'd, malloc'd or (recently) free'd
  
  ==61362==
  
  ==61362==
  
  ==61362== Process terminating with default action of signal 11 (SIGSEGV)
  
  ==61362==  Bad permissions for mapped region at address 0x0
  
  ==61362==    at 0x0: ???
  
  ==61362==    by 0x70BB1B: ??? (in /src/FFmpeg/ffmpeg)
  
  ==61362==    by 0x70B2E6: ??? (in /src/FFmpeg/ffmpeg)
  
  ==61362==    by 0x4033F9: ??? (in /src/FFmpeg/ffmpeg)
  
  ==61362==    by 0x1FFF000677: ???
  
  ==61362==
  
  ==61362== HEAP SUMMARY:
  
  ==61362==     in use at exit: 0 bytes in 0 blocks
  
  ==61362==   total heap usage: 0 allocs, 0 frees, 0 bytes allocated
  
  ==61362==
  
  ==61362== All heap blocks were freed -- no leaks are possible
  
  ==61362==
  
  ==61362== For counts of detected and suppressed errors, rerun with: -v
  
  ==61362== Use --track-origins=yes to see where uninitialised values come from
  
  ==61362== ERROR SUMMARY: 93 errors from 90 contexts (suppressed: 0 from 0)
  
  Segmentation fault

  Attempting to access memory at location 0x0 sounds like trying to follow a null pointer. But I’m not sure how to fix this.

  gdb backtrace

  When I first ran gdb ./ffmpeg gdb immediately gave me a segmentation fault and I wasn’t kicked into the gdb REPL, so I couldn’t investigate

  After rebuilding ffmpeg I was able to get in this time :

  $> gdb ./ffmpeg
  
  
  
  GNU gdb (Ubuntu 8.1-0ubuntu3.2) 8.1.0.20180409-git
  
  Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  
  License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later /gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
  
  This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
  
  There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying"
  
  and "show warranty" for details.
  
  This GDB was configured as "x86_64-linux-gnu".
  
  Type "show configuration" for configuration details.
  
  For bug reporting instructions, please see:
  
  /www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>.
  
  Find the GDB manual and other documentation resources online at:
  
  /www.gnu.org/software/gdb/documentation/>.
  
  For help, type "help".
  
  Type "apropos word" to search for commands related to "word"...
  
  Reading symbols from ffmpeg...done.
  
  (gdb) r
  
  Starting program: /src/FFmpeg/ffmpeg
  
  warning: Error disabling address space randomization: Operation not permitted
  
  
  
  Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
  
  0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()
  
  (gdb) bt
  
  #0  0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()
  
  #1  0x0000000000f9a8d5 in __register_frame_info_bases.part.6 ()
  
  #2  0x00000000004445fd in frame_dummy ()
  
  #3  0x0000000000000001 in ?? ()
  
  #4  0x0000000000ebd20c in __libc_csu_init ()
  
  #5  0x0000000000ebc9d7 in __libc_start_main ()
  
  #6  0x000000000044451a in _start ()
  
  (gdb)

  I tried grep’ing the code base for __register_frame_info_bases and found nothing. So I’m not really sure where to go from here

  A fix, but not an explanation

  By randomly removing configuration parameters and rebuilding I discovered that --disable-pthreads was causing the segmentation fault. When I remove this, ffmpeg runs just fine

  I don’t know why this is the case, though. Why would they make it possible to remove something that you need to run ?

• Benefits and Shortcomings of Multi-Touch Attribution

  13 mars 2023, par Erin — Analytics Tips

  Few sales happen instantly. Consumers take their time to discover, evaluate and become convinced to go with your offer. 

  Multi-channel attribution (also known as multi-touch attribution or MTA) helps businesses better understand which marketing tactics impact consumers’ decisions at different stages of their buying journey. Then double down on what’s working to secure more sales. 

  Unlike standard analytics, multi-channel modelling combines data from various channels to determine their cumulative and independent impact on your conversion rates. 

  The main benefit of multi-touch attribution is obvious : See top-performing channels, as well as those involved in assisted conversions. The drawback of multi-touch attribution : It comes with a more complex setup process. 

  If you’re on the fence about getting started with multi-touch attribution, here’s a summary of the main arguments for and against it. 

  What Are the Benefits of Multi-Touch Attribution ?

  Remember an old parable of blind men and an elephant ?

  Each one touched the elephant and drew conclusions about how it might look. The group ended up with different perceptions of the animal and thought the others were lying…until they decided to work together on establishing the truth.

  Multi-channel analytics works in a similar way : It reconciles data from various channels and campaign types into one complete picture. So that you can get aligned on the efficacy of different campaign types and gain some other benefits too. 

  Better Understanding of Customer Journeys 

  On average, it takes 8 interactions with a prospect to generate a conversion. These interactions happen in three stages : 

  • Awareness : You need to introduce your company to the target buyers and pique their interest in your solution (top-of-the-funnel). 
  • Consideration : The next step is to channel this casual interest into deliberate research and evaluation of your offer (middle-of-the-funnel). 
  • Decision : Finally, you need to get the buyer to commit to your offer and close the deal (bottom-of-the-funnel). 

  You can analyse funnels using various attribution models — last-click, fist-click, position-based attribution, etc. Each model, however, will spotlight the different element(s) of your sales funnel. 

  For example, a single-touch attribution model like last-click zooms in on the bottom-of-the-funnel stage. You can evaluate which channels (or on-site elements) sealed the deal for the prospect. For example, a site visitor arrived from an affiliate link and started a free trial. In this case, the affiliate (referral traffic) gets 100% credit for the conversion. 

  This measurement tactic, however, doesn’t show which channels brought the customer to the very bottom of your funnel. For instance, they may have interacted with a social media post, your landing pages or a banner ad before that. 

  Multi-touch attribution modelling takes funnel analysis a notch further. In this case, you map more steps in the customer journey — actions, events, and pages that triggered a visitor’s decision to convert — in your website analytics tool.

  

  Then, select a multi-touch attribution model, which provides more backward visibility aka allows you to track more than one channel, preceding the conversion. 

  For example, a Position Based attribution model reports back on all interactions a site visitor had between their first visit and conversion. 

  A prospect first lands at your website via search results (Search traffic), which gets a 40% credit in this model. Two days later, the same person discovers a mention of your website on another blog and visits again (Referral traffic). This time, they save the page as a bookmark and revisit it again in two more days (Direct traffic). Each of these channels will get a 10% credit. A week later, the prospect lands again on your site via Twitter (Social) and makes a request for a demo. Social would then receive a 40% credit for this conversion. Last-click would have only credited social media and first-click — search engines. 

  The bottom line : Multi-channel attribution models show how different channels (and marketing tactics) contribute to conversions at different stages of the customer journey. Without it, you get an incomplete picture.

  Improved Budget Allocation 

  Understanding causal relationships between marketing activities and conversion rates can help you optimise your budgets.

  First-click/last-click attribution models emphasise the role of one channel. This can prompt you toward the wrong conclusions. 

  For instance, your Facebook ads campaigns do great according to a first-touch model. So you decide to increase the budget. What you might be missing though is that you could have an even higher conversion rate and revenue if you fix “funnel leaks” — address high drop-off rates during checkout, improve page layout and address other possible reasons for exiting the page.

  

  By knowing when and why people abandon their purchase journey, you can improve your marketing velocity (aka the speed of seeing the campaign results) and your marketing costs (aka the budgets you allocate toward different assets, touchpoints and campaign types). 

  Or as one of the godfathers of marketing technology, Dan McGaw, explained in a webinar :

  “Once you have a multi-touch attribution model, you [can] actually know the return on ad spend on a per-campaign basis. Sometimes, you can get it down to keywords. Sometimes, you can get down to all kinds of other information, but you start to realise, “Oh, this campaign sucks. I should shut this off.” And then really, that’s what it’s about. It’s seeing those campaigns that suck and turning them off and then taking that budget and putting it into the campaigns that are working”.

  More Accurate Measurements 

  The big boon of multi-channel marketing attribution is that you can zoom in on various elements of your funnel and gain granular data on the asset’s performance. 

  In other words : You get more accurate insights into the different elements involved in customer journeys. But for accurate analytics measurements, you must configure accurate tracking. 

  Define your objectives first : How do you want a multi-touch attribution tool to help you ? Multi-channel attribution analysis helps you answer important questions such as :

  • How many touchpoints are involved in the conversions ? 
  • How long does it take for a lead to convert on average ? 
  • When and where do different audience groups convert ? 
  • What is your average win rate for different types of campaigns ?

  Your objectives will dictate which multi-channel modelling approach will work best for your business — as well as the data you’ll need to collect. 

  At the highest level, you need to collect two data points :

  • Conversions : Desired actions from your prospects — a sale, a newsletter subscription, a form submission, etc. Record them as tracked Goals. 
  • Touchpoints : Specific interactions between your brand and targets — specific page visits, referral traffic from a particular marketing channel, etc. Record them as tracked Events. 

  Your attribution modelling software will then establish correlation patterns between actions (conversions) and assets (touchpoints), which triggered them. 

  The accuracy of these measurements, however, will depend on the quality of data and the type of attribution modelling used. 

  Data quality stands for your ability to procure accurate, complete and comprehensive information from various touchpoints. For instance, some data won’t be available if the user rejected a cookie consent banner (unless you’re using a privacy-focused web analytics tool like Matomo). 

  Different attribution modelling techniques come with inherent shortcomings too as they don’t accurately represent the average sales cycle length or track visitor-level data, which allows you to understand which customer segments convert best.

  Learn more about selecting the optimal multi-channel attribution model for your business.

  What Are the Limitations of Multi-Touch Attribution ?

  Overall, multi-touch attribution offers a more comprehensive view of the conversion paths. However, each attribution model (except for custom ones) comes with inherent assumptions about the contribution of different channels (e.g,. 25%-25%-25%-25% in linear attribution or 40%-10%-10%-40% in position-based attribution). These conversion credit allocations may not accurately represent the realities of your industry. 

  Also, most attribution models don’t reflect incremental revenue you gain from existing customers, which aren’t converting through analysed channels. For example, account upgrades to a higher tier, triggered via an in-app offer. Or warranty upsell, made via a marketing email. 

  In addition, you should keep in mind several other limitations of multi-touch attribution software.

  Limited Marketing Mix Analysis 

  Multi-touch attribution tools work in conjunction with your website analytics app (as they draw most data from it). Because of that, such models inherit the same visibility into your marketing mix — a combo of tactics you use to influence consumer decisions.

  Multi-touch attribution tools cannot evaluate the impact of :

  • Dark social channels 
  • Word-of-mouth 
  • Offline promotional events
  • TV or out-of-home ad campaigns 

  If you want to incorporate this data into your multi-attribution reporting, you’ll have to procure extra data from other systems — CRM, ad measurement partners, etc, — and create complex custom analytics models for its evaluation.

  Time-Based Constraints 

  Most analytics apps provide a maximum 90-day lookback window for attribution. This can be short for companies with longer sales cycles. 

  

  Marketing channels can be overlooked or underappreciated when your attribution window is too short. Because of that, you may curtail spending on brand awareness campaigns, which, in turn, will reduce the number of people entering the later stages of your funnel. 

  At the same time, many businesses would also want to track a look-forward window — the revenue you’ll get from one customer over their lifetime. In this case, not all tools may allow you to capture accurate information on repeat conversions — through re-purchases, account tier updates, add-ons, upsells, etc. 

  Again, to get an accurate picture you’ll need to understand how far into the future you should track conversions. Will you only record your first sales as a revenue number or monitor customer lifetime value (CLV) over 3, 6 or 12 months ? 

  The latter is more challenging to do. But CLV data can add another depth of dimension to your modelling accuracy. With Matomo, you set up this type of tracking by using our visitors’ tracking feature. We can help you track select visitors with known identifiers (e.g. name or email address) to discover their visiting patterns over time. 

  

  Limited Access to Raw Data 

  In web analytics, raw data stands for unprocessed website visitor information, stripped from any filters, segmentation or sampling applied. 

  Data sampling is a practice of analysing data subsets (instead of complete records) to extrapolate findings towards the entire data set. Google Analytics 4 applies data sampling once you hit over 500k sessions at the property level. So instead of accurate, real-life reporting, you receive approximations, generated by machine learning models. Data sampling is one of the main reasons behind Google Analytics’ accuracy issues. 

  In multi-channel attribution modelling, usage of sampled data creates further inconsistencies between the reports and the actual state of affairs. For instance, if your website generates 5 million page views, GA multi-touch analytical reports are based on the 500K sample size aka only 90% of the collected information. This hardly represents the real effect of all marketing channels and can lead to subpar decision-making. 

  With Matomo, the above is never an issue. We don’t apply data sampling to any websites (no matter the volume of traffic) and generate all the reports, including multi-channel attribution ones, based on 100% real user data. 

  AI Application 

  On the other hand, websites with smaller traffic volumes often have limited sampling datasets for building attribution models. Some tracking data may also be not available because the visitor rejected a cookie banner, for instance. On average, less than 50% of users in Australia, France, Germany, Denmark and the US among other countries always consent to all cookies. 

  To compensate for such scenarios, some multi-touch attribution solutions apply AI algorithms to “fill in the blanks”, which impacts the reporting accuracy. Once again, you get approximate data of what probably happened. However, Matomo is legally exempt from showing a cookie consent banner in most EU markets. Meaning you can collect 100% accurate data to make data-driven decisions.

  Difficult Technical Implementation 

  Ever since attribution modelling got traction in digital marketing, more and more tools started to emerge.

  

  Most web analytics apps include multi-touch attribution reports. Then there are standalone multi-channel attribution platforms, offering extra features for conversion rate optimization, offline channel tracking, data-driven custom modelling, etc. 

  Most advanced solutions aren’t available out of the box. Instead, you have to install several applications, configure integrations with requested data sources, and then use the provided interfaces to code together custom data models. Such solutions are great if you have a technical marketer or a data science team. But a steep learning curve and high setup costs make them less attractive for smaller teams. 

  Conclusion 

  Multi-touch attribution modelling lifts the curtain in more steps, involved in various customer journeys. By understanding which touchpoints contribute to conversions, you can better plan your campaign types and budget allocations. 

  That said, to benefit from multi-touch attribution modelling, marketers also need to do the preliminary work : Determine the key goals, set up event and conversion tracking, and then — select the optimal attribution model type and tool. 

  Matomo combines simplicity with sophistication. We provide marketers with familiar, intuitive interfaces for setting up conversion tracking across the funnel. Then generate attribution reports, based on 100% accurate data (without any sampling or “guesstimation” applied). You can also get access to raw analytics data to create custom attribution models or plug it into another tool ! 

  Start using accurate, easy-to-use multi-channel attribution with Matomo. Start your free 21-day trial now. No credit card requried. 

• 9 Form Optimisation Tips to Convert More Visitors

  15 février 2024, par Erin

  Forms might seem boring — that is, until you realise how powerful they are.

  No forms mean no leads.

  No leads mean no sales.

  No sales means you’ll run out of business.

  So, what do you do ?

  Optimise forms to land more leads.

  They’re a critical part of the sales funnel.

  Forms have many different purposes and can be used to :

  • Contact a company
  • Sign up for a newsletter
  • Request a demo
  • Start a free trial
  • And more

  If you want to get more leads (and ultimately more sales), then you need to optimise your forms.

  This guide will show you exactly how to do that (so you can start getting more conversions today). 

  What is form optimisation ?

  Before we dive into form optimisation, let’s back up a bit.

  Form conversion is our primary focus.

  Your form conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who submit a form divided by the total number of visitors who started the form times one hundred.

  For example, if 5,000 people started filling out your form this month and 350 submitted the form, the conversion rate would be : 

  350 / 5,000 x 100 = 7%

  So, what’s form optimisation ?

  

  It’s simply improving your forms to increase conversion rates.

  For most people, form conversion is all about increasing leads.

  Before you begin optimising your forms, it’s important you understand what’s good (and what’s not good) when it comes to form conversions.

  The average form conversion rate across all industries is 2.9%.

  This means you should expect about 3 out of every 100 visitors who start your form to submit it.

  If your form conversion is lower — or hovering around this number — then it’s important to start optimising now.

  With Matomo, you can track your form conversions with Matomo Form Analytics. Gain powerful insights into how your visitors interact with your forms with our intuitive dashboard.

  Why it’s important to optimise your forms

  Most people hear the word “forms” and think it’s boring.

  But forms are the doorway to leads.

  If you want to generate more sales, then you need to generate great forms.

  Here are five reasons you need to optimise your forms today :

  

  1. Improve conversions

  Form optimisation is really just conversion optimisation.

  But, instead of optimising and improving your site to directly improve sales conversions, you’re increasing lead conversions.

  Every smart website owner uses forms to draw people in further.

  The reality is that most of your website visitors will never return to your site.

  This means you need to do everything you can to grab their contact information so you can continue marketing to them day in and day out.

  Otherwise, you’ll lose them forever.

  When you know how to optimise your forms, you’ll be able to get a higher percentage of form viewers to fill it out.

  Higher conversions mean you get more leads, more customers, and ultimately more revenue.

  2. Capture more leads

  When you can increase your form conversion rate from 1% to 2%, it may seem insignificant.

  What’s a measly percentage point in conversions ?

  It’s a lot.

  When you’re dealing with traffic in the tens or hundreds of thousands each month, an increase in conversion rate by a whole percentile is massive.

  Let’s say you take your conversion rate from 2% to 3% on your form, and you have 70,000 visitors view the form each month.

  Well, if 1,400 people used to sign up to your email list each month at a 2% conversion rate, then at a 3% conversion rate, you’d get 2,100 new email signups every month.

  That’s a major difference.

  When you can improve your signup forms, you improve your lead generation (which is conversion rate optimisation). And the more leads you have, the more sales you’ll make in the long run.

  3. Get the most out of your traffic

  If your forms don’t perform well, then you’re wasting your time (and your traffic).

  By analysing your form data, you can quickly see what’s working and what’s not so you can optimise and improve the user experience (and your forms).

  For most people, this means getting more form viewers to fill out the form with their email and name.

  If 50,000 people visit your site each month, but only 1% of them fill out your form, you’re only getting 500 email signups per month.

  Rather than paying money to generate more traffic, why not just work on improving your website by implementing a better form ?

  If you can increase your form conversion rate to 2%, you will immediately go from 500 new subscribers per month to 1,000 per month.

  4. Spend less on acquisition

  If you’re able to get more form signups without having to generate more traffic, you just solved a pricey problem : acquisition costs.

  If you can now get 1,000 of your 50,000 visitors to sign up to your email list through a better form, then you doubled your signups.

  But that’s not all. You just cut your acquisition costs in half.

  If you spend $2,000 per month on acquisition but you’re able to get twice as many leads, then your acquisition costs are at 50% of what they used to be.

  This means you can pay the same amount but get twice as many leads.

  Or, you can pour even more money into acquisition since it’s now twice as effective so you can fuel growth even more.

  5. Grow revenue

  Forms generate revenue. It may not be direct (although, in some cases, it is). 

  But, forms will lead to sales.

  By placing optimised forms throughout your website at the right places, you will be able to capture a percentage of your visitors as leads, which means you’ll eventually make more sales.

  13 tips to optimise your forms for more conversions

  Now that you know what forms can do and why they’re important to grow your business, it’s time to dive into the best practices.

  Follow these 13 tips to ensure you’re getting the most out of your forms :

  

  1. Set form goals

  Your forms are hopeless without a goal.

  Before you set up a form on your website, ask yourself, “What am I trying to accomplish with this form ?”

  It could be :

  • Encouraging customers to reach out through a contact form
  • To get visitors to leave feedback on your product/service
  • Convert visitors into leads by giving you their email

  No matter what your goal is, make sure you’re clear on it ; otherwise, you won’t be as targeted and specific with your forms.

  Matomo Goals helps you set specific objectives for your marketing campaigns so you’re able to easily track conversions. Whether you’re looking to capture feedback or generate leads, you can leverage Matomo to see what’s working and what’s not in seconds.

  2. Remove or improve fields with high average time spent and high drop-off rates

  Delving into your Form Analytics provides invaluable insights into individual field performance. A crucial metric to focus on is the Average Time Spent. 

  If a field stands out with a significantly higher average time spent and experiences a high drop-off rate compared to others in the form, it’s a clear indicator that it’s causing frustration or confusion for your visitors.

  To address this, consider improving the field by converting it into a dropdown menu for easier completion or providing helpful text prompts. Alternatively, if the field isn’t essential, you might opt to remove it altogether.

  When you cut down on time spent and drop-offs, you’ll see your conversion rates go up.

  

  Here’s a standout example from Matomo’s Form Analytics feature : the “Overview of your needs” field is taking on average 1 minute and 37 seconds to complete. 

  To streamline this, we might want to consider a simple fix like converting it into a dropdown menu. This change would offer visitors a clearer and quicker way to select from options.

  

  Likewise, we observe that the “Overview of your needs” field experiences the highest drop-off rate, totaling 1,732 drop-offs. 

  With Form Analytics, it becomes clear what is needed to optimise forms and increase conversions.

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  3. Start with the CTA

  When crafting and optimising your forms, you need to start with the end in mind. That’s why you need to start with your business goals.

  What are you trying to do with this form ? If you want to capture more emails, then make sure that’s very clear with the call to action (CTA).

  Start building your form by beginning with the CTA.

  For example : “Sign Up Now.”

  Once you have the action you want your potential customers to take, place it on the form. Then, you can work towards crafting the rest of the form.

  4. Put it above the fold

  If your visitors can’t find your form, they won’t fill it out. It’s plain and simple.

  You need to make sure your form is visible above the fold. This is the part of the screen that’s visible to your visitors once they land on your site (without needing to scroll down).

  Always remember to test this out on both desktop and mobile to ensure anyone (using laptops or a mobile device) will see your form upon landing on your site or page.

  Don’t forget about your mobile users. More people view mobile forms than desktop forms. 

  5. Put a CTA in the headline

  Your form needs to be clear.

  You have 1-3 seconds to communicate with your site visitors what your form is all about.

  For example, if you’re trying to get email signups with a lead magnet, then tell them the benefit quickly and concisely with a CTA in the headline, like this one :

  “Subscribe to Save 10% On Your Next Order”

  This is a great example of a headline-CTA combo that tells the visitor what to do and what they get out of it.

  Matomo’s behaviour analytics features like Session Recordings let you see where visitors are clicking and spending time. For example, if people are reading the headline, but not scrolling down to read the form, it’s probably a sign you need to test a different headline.

  6. Ensure you have the right fields

  Your form fields matter.

  What information are you trying to capture from your audience ?

  One beginner mistake people make is requiring too much information and including many fields in a form.

  You want to get as much data on your audience as possible, right ? Wrong.

  If you ask for too much information, people won’t fill it out, and it will harm the user experience. You need to make it super easy.

  If you want more emails to grow your list, then stick with someone’s email (and possibly their name as well). One line for a name. One line for an email address. Keep it simple.

  If you’re after SMS as well, don’t include it on the form. Instead, create a two-step form that pops up an SMS form after someone fills out the email form.

  Multi-step forms enable you to capture those emails easily (and still get a percentage to fill out the second form) without making it seem like too much work for your audience.

  Another path is to include optional fields (that users don’t have to fill out to click submit).

  Just keep in mind that shorter forms perform better than longer ones.

  If you make them too long, it feels like work for the user and will lead to lower completion rates.

  7. Always capture email address

  If you’re unsure of what information to capture (i.e. name, number, email, occupation, age, etc.), always stick to email.

  Email is used by over 4 billion people every single day, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

  When determining which fields to include, start with email.

  

  8. Test different buttons and copy

  You need to track your form performance if you want to get the best conversions.

  One of the best form elements to start testing is your button copy.

  In most cases, form completion buttons will have the word “submit” on them.

  But you don’t have to stick with this word.

  You can (and should) experiment with different submit button copy.

  Here are a few examples of replacement words for your action button :

  • Complete
  • Sign Up
  • Join now
  • Get started

  Remember to experiment with your action button. Try a different copy. Just keep it short.

  You can also try A/B testing your form by experimenting with different colours, copy, and more.

  

  In the example above from Matomo’s A/B testing feature, we found that changing the wording of our call to action made a big difference. The new “Apply Now” button performed much better, with a 3.6% conversion rate compared to just 1.7% for the original one.

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  9. Test static vs. popup

  There are various types of online forms.

  The most common is the static form that just sits in one place and is always there.

  Another popular form type is the popup.

  This is where a form will appear based on a certain trigger like :

  • A certain amount of time on page
  • A certain distance scrolling down the page
  • If someone is a new or returning visitor

  Depending on the form software you use, you may be able to add conditional logic.

  Start tracking your form conversions

  Form optimisation is all about conversion rate optimisation.

  If you want to increase your conversions and generate more revenue, then you need to test out different forms and know how to optimise them.

  With Matomo, you can easily track, manage, and A/B test your forms so you can improve your conversions. 

  Try Matomo free for 21 days. No credit card required.

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