Troubleshooting non-HubSpot Forms

[jennysowyrda]

Non-HubSpot forms is a powerful marketing tool that provides insight into contacts that are converting through external form submissions and automatically delivers that information into your HubSpot portal.

With great power, however, comes great responsibility, and as such it is important to be able to troubleshoot your non-HubSpot form. I wanted to share a few tips for troubleshooting non-HubSpot forms to empower us all to not only identify problems, but solve them.

Before getting started, it is important to note that in order for non-HubSpot forms to gather any data, your HubSpot tracking code must be present on your website pages. 

1. Finding your Form

If you are troubleshooting your external form, the first tool to put in your troubleshooting toolkit is the ability to find your form.

To access the HTML of your form, you will need to view the page source associated with your form. To view the page source, you will want to follow the following steps:

1.     Load your landing page in an internet browser (for this example I am using Chrome)
2.     Right click anywhere on the page
3.     Select “view page source”
4.     This will prompt a new tab to open in which we can see the HTML of the page.
5. Find your form by looking for the <form> (opening) and </form> (closing) tags on your page.

Once you’ve found  your form you can begin to troubleshoot what is interfering with the form submissions. 

2. Iframe, javascript, and loading-OH MY!

There are a few parameters that a form must meet for it to be recognized by HubSpot. If your form isn't connecting with your portal, investigating these three elements is a good starting point. 

Your form must have: 

1. No javascript bound to the “submit” button
2. No <iframe> around your <form> tags
3. The form will need to be present on the page when the page initially loads.

For a full explanation of these elements, this Knowledgebase article is a great resource.

3. Is your form supported? 

Check out this list to confirm that your form builder is supported by HubSpot for non-HubSpot forms.

By checking these three elements, you will be able to begin troubleshooting your own Collected Form.

[KReading]

Hello @jennysowyrda,

Thanks a lot for sharing your troubleshooting techniques and the screenshots of how a non-Hubspot form can be implemented.

I am implementing a non-Hubspot form using a simple static html form ie: 

<form>
  <input type="email" placeholder="Email Address">
  <input type="submit" value="→">
</form>

At the moment when clicking the "Submit", the page is reloaded at which point the form is picked up by the HS tracking code and sent to HS. 

I was wondering if in your travels you had found a nice way to not allow the reload and even perhaps include an authentication (such as a honey-pot)?

I am trying to keep it all very vanilla, using only html and if necessary js, but if the solution lies somewhere within another language, I am interested in learning about that too. 

I am running a php based CMS, but not Wordpress, so do not have the possibility to use one of their form related plugins.

Thanks a lot,

Kiah

[dennisedson]

Hey @KReading ,

Feel like it might be helpful to get some insights from some of my favorite developers 😀

@tjoyce, @kierana (do not let that last sentence go to your head), how would you approach @KReading 's question?

[roisinkirby]

Thanks for sharing @jennysowyrda!

Tagging @behleryoung @asierra4 @Frank412 as I've seen recent troubleshooting queries from you r.e. Collected Forms. This post should be of help, I'd reccommend bookmarking it 🙂