Form analytics case study: where a Dubai real estate site lost mobile leads
In this form analytics case study, a Dubai real estate company's CRM held every lead but nothing about the visitors who gave up. GTM form tracking and Microsoft Clarity showed the long enquiry form running past the fold on phones. A shorter, progressive form followed, and conversions on the optimized page rose 23%, 50 days before vs 50 days after.
Seen with GTM form events and Microsoft Clarity · Offers: Tracking Audit, then a one-off CRO audit
The enquiry form on a phone, and the finding behind each change
A property enquiry needs a lot of detail: apartment or individual house, the size of the apartment, the number of bedrooms and more. On a phone that added up to one very long form. Each numbered change traces back to something the tracking or the recordings showed.
- GTM events in GA4
Form starts and submits, counted apart
Form initiate and form submit events showed, for the first time, how many visitors began the enquiry and how many finished it. The CRM had only ever seen the finishers.
Drove: the baseline for the 50-day before and after comparison - Clarity heatmaps
Pain points on specific fields
Heatmaps showed where visitors stalled on individual fields of the long form.
Drove: a few fields removed - Clarity recordings
Trouble at the point of submitting
Recordings showed visitors struggling to submit. In several cases on phones the form ran past the first fold, and its fields were hard to tap into and type.
Drove: a progressive form that asks for details one step at a time
Illustrative layoutField names follow the case description. The exact fields removed and the number of steps are not published.
What happened to conversions on the optimized page
+23%Conversions on the optimized page rose 23%, comparing the 50 days before the form change with the 50 days after it. Visitors interacted with the form more, too.
Form change
- The 23% applies to that page and those two windows only
- The company now sees form starts, submits and recordings, and the next change can start from data
- Offers used: a Tracking Audit, then a one-off CRO audit
Why did the CRM miss the visitors who gave up?
Every lead landed in the CRM, and the company knew exactly who its leads were. It could not see how visitors moved through the site, who started the form or where they quit. Without that, nobody could say what to change.
Form analytics setup: two events that track drop-off
This is the tracking that made the 23% measurable. GA4's enhanced measurement can send form events on its own, but it misses many AJAX and embedded forms. Tag Manager triggers let you decide exactly when each event fires.
| Event | Fires when | Trigger in Tag Manager | Read it as |
|---|---|---|---|
form_startForm initiate | A visitor first focuses or types in a field of the form | A data layer event pushed on the first focus inside the form, once per form view | Visitors who meant to enquire |
form_submitForm submit | The site confirms the enquiry went through | The success message or the thank-you page, never the button click, which also fires on failed attempts | Leads the CRM should also hold |
| Drop-offStarts minus submits | A start never reaches a submit in the same session | A funnel exploration in GA4 with both events as steps | The page whose Clarity recordings to watch first |
Watch for double counting. If enhanced measurement's form interactions setting is on and Tag Manager also sends form_start and form_submit, each start is counted twice. Switch one of them off before you compare starts with submits.
Form analytics, before you rebuild a lead form
How do you track form starts and submits in GA4?
What does Microsoft Clarity add to GA4?
What is a progressive form?
How was the 23% uplift measured?
Show us the form that leaks
Send the page with your longest form. We open it on a phone first and reply within one business day with what we would track before anyone changes a field.
The form below has two short steps, for the reason this case gives.