Forms and utms

[EKunic]

I've encountered a question that I haven't been able to find answers to, even after spending a whole day trying to solve it. I was wondering if anyone here could recommend a solution.

Currently, when someone fills out a form, like "Try for Free" on our site, in HubSpot, we see that the lead came from the "Try for Free" page. However, we lack information about the specific webpage or landing page they were on before  landing on "try for free" landing page where the form is and filled it out. I've tried adding parameters as hidden fields, but it doesn't seem to work as desired.

Any recommendations how to solve this? I want to be able to see which page visitors came from before landing on the "Try for Free" page. 

Thanks in advance! 

[BCondon7 · Accepted solution]

Apologies @EKunic - you're right, and I may need to backtrack from my previous message. The term 'Entrance URL' will be specific to direct traffic (basically what visitors would have typed in their browser) and what you'll see here will differ depending on the Source, so it could be Campaign name, Social media platform etc

So, on second thought, the 'Submissions by source' report wouldn't be the best method for seeing the pages that visitors were on before the form submission.

After doing a little more digging, this may in fact be a limitation of the Forms Analytics. There was an Idea posted to the Community where others were running into the same thing (no harm in giving this an upvote btw!). This would mean you'd have to view the individual Contact Timeline to see the Page history.

Now, something else you could try is building an Attribution report. There's actually a pre-built attribution report called "What type of interactions happened before a contact was created?'. If you have a Marketing Hub Pro subscription, this would be a good option if you wanted a more holistic view of where these Contacts are coming from before the form submission.

[EKunic]

truid.app - thanks 🙂

[EKunic]

Hi,

I have a form listener for all forms installed in GTM. Should that one work?

Thanks

[BCondon7]

Hi @EKunic , I'm happy to help you look into this. I have a few questions for you first:

1. Is your website hosted on HubSpot or is it an external website?

2. If external, can you double check the HubSpot tracking code is firing correctly?

If your website is hosted on HubSpot/the tracking code is firing, then there should be cookies set when a visitor lands on your website. Of course, it's quite possible that not all visitors are consenting to cookie tracking, but I'd imagine you'd still see some activity for some contacts.

3. Are you unable to see prior page activity for all contacts who submit the form? Or is it only a select few who submit the form where no prior website activity was recorded?

[EKunic]

Hi,

Thank you for your response.

We are hosting our site on Hubspot and using hubspot forms.

For every lead that comes in, it says form submitted on try for free
landing page" which makes sense because that is where the form is on, but
we want to see the page they landed on first, and then pressed the
CTA button "Try for free" because that is the page that should count the
conversion and not when they land on "try for free" because that is not the
entry page.

I hope you understand what i mean 🙂

[BCondon7]

Hi @EKunic , 

I understand the goal all right, but we may need to narrow this down a bit further to understand why you're not seeing where they came from before they landed on the 'try for free' landing page. Out of interest, when you check the Contact Timeline of any of the Contacts that have submitted the form, and filter by Page Views, is it only the one page visit showing? 

Also, if you check the Contact properties (Navigate to Contacts in the Main Nav > Contacts > Name of Contact > View all properties) what values are showing for these proeprties?:

First conversion

Original source drill-down 1

[EKunic]

Hi,

We can see in pageviews what pages they were at before coming to the try
for free landing page but the conversion does not get attributed to the
entry page but to the try for free page, we can see in page views of course
but then it is still not correct when Hubspot attributes the conversion to
the try for free page.

[BCondon7]

Ok, thanks for clarifying @EKunic. This might be down to the terminology HubSpot is using in their Form analytics. When you check the performance of an individual form, the 'Conversion Page' is the page that the form was submitted on. You'll see a definition in this KB article under 'Analyze individual forms'. 

Perhaps what you're looking for is what HubSpot refers to as 'Source' or the 'Submissions by source' report to be exact. In this report, you'll see the Source as 'Direct traffic', or 'Organic search' etc. When you click the number under Submissions, you'll see the list of 'Entrace URLs' that displays the pages where visitors came from.

Hope that makes sense?

[EKunic]

Hi,

I don't think that is the case, I just checked in our reporting. The "try for free" is the one that all the conversions are getting attributed to, no one lands on our "try for free" page without coming from another landing page first. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place.

Where can i find the entrance URL?

thank you 🙂

[EKunic]

Hi,

I don't think that is the case, I just checked in our reporting. The "try
for free" is the one that all the conversions are getting attributed to, no
one lands on our "try for free" page without coming from another landing
page first. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place.

Where can i find the entrance URL?

thank you 🙂

[BCondon7 · Accepted solution]

Apologies @EKunic - you're right, and I may need to backtrack from my previous message. The term 'Entrance URL' will be specific to direct traffic (basically what visitors would have typed in their browser) and what you'll see here will differ depending on the Source, so it could be Campaign name, Social media platform etc

So, on second thought, the 'Submissions by source' report wouldn't be the best method for seeing the pages that visitors were on before the form submission.

After doing a little more digging, this may in fact be a limitation of the Forms Analytics. There was an Idea posted to the Community where others were running into the same thing (no harm in giving this an upvote btw!). This would mean you'd have to view the individual Contact Timeline to see the Page history.

Now, something else you could try is building an Attribution report. There's actually a pre-built attribution report called "What type of interactions happened before a contact was created?'. If you have a Marketing Hub Pro subscription, this would be a good option if you wanted a more holistic view of where these Contacts are coming from before the form submission.

[EKunic]

I guess there is no way around this then?

How about if one manipulates the form?  Set a javascript code?

[BriMackey · Accepted solution]

Hi @EKunic,

Hope you don't mind me jumping in here.

It really depends on what way you want to use this information in regards to the "webpage visited prior to submission".

If this is for reporting (and depending on your current HubSpot subscription) custom Funnel Reporting might be exactly what you are looking for here, rather than a custom JS solution (which would be something we can investigate with you once we understand the use case better).

If you would like to jump on a call to discuss further, please don't hesitate to book a call using the "book a meeting" button below.

Thanks and have a great week.

Kind Regards,

Brian