HubSpot forms include a “Performance” tab in which one report is called “Submission by source”.
Does HubSpot use “latest source” or “original source” or something very different for indicating the source?
I am asking because we have some discrepancies between source submission versus other source reportings.
One example: On 8/8/2024 a new user came to our website via paid search.
HubSpot tracked Google Ads Activity for this user at 11:01. The user checks out some pages and then submits one form (only one) at 11:06, which is also the time the contact was created in HubSpot. That is the only interaction this person had with our website.
Now, I can see under Original Source that the person came via Google Ads. In the drill-down, I even see which keyword was used.
However, in the form itself, according to “submission by source”, we had zero paid search submissions. (I double-checked that the dates are correct)
Does anyone have an idea how this is possible?
Thank you very much in advance for the help.
Fabian
PS: One other odd thing: The “latest source” for the contact is “organic search” with time entry at 11:06. Precisely also at 11:06 the original source got its entry with “Paid Search”. Could the reason be, that the person had our website open in multiple tabs? Could that have an impact on form submission source?
When a user first visits your website they will receive a cookie, regardless of wether they convert or not. How they first reached your site through that visit will stay as long as the cookie stays on that browser.
However, when they submit a form, HubSpot will look for the source of the session that led to that form submission, not how they first arrived on your site.
So for example, if I was to visit your site through a paid ad on 1 August, I looked around and clicked a few things but never submit a form, I’m an unknown visitor who contributes to your analytics. However I will not be a contact.
If I then visited your website’s URL directly on September 1 and submit a form, I would have a contact created. My form submission source would be direct traffic, but the first place I saw your website on would be a paid ad so I would have a contact original source of a paid ad.
If a person gets via an ad on the website, navigates through several pages there and finally lands on the page with the form in it — the submission source would be still paid, right?
Because I can see, when the user interacted with the ad, which was 6 minutes before submitting the form. In the contact’s activity stream are no indication that they visited the website twice.
At least it appears for us as if the user saw an ad, clicked on the ad, checked out the offering for 5 minutes, landed on the page with the form on it and submitted the form straight away — all at once on the same day.
I cannot completely wrap my head around it, but based on your explanation, I take it as given, that the user must have visited the page with the form directly or through organic search somehow.
Hey @DerFabian the properties will only update on the form submission/contact creation. I think this might be causing confusion, so for example:
I visit your webstie from an organic search on 1st September. I look around and leave the site.
I visit the site on 3rd September through an ad and submit a form.
I will have an original source of organic search, this value will have been set on 3rd September as this is when my contact was created.
The “latest source” property is the most recent known source of a tracked visit on that contact, so they would have to have submit a form prior to this to have a known cookie to track the latest source property. There’s myriad reasons why the source may not fully match your expectations, but honestly it’s hard to say for sure without seeing the contact.
The article on latest source vs record source here might help!