How Did You Find Us?

8 out of 10 people taking the time to...

[pageoneresults]

...fill in the blanks.

How many of you make extensive use of online contact forms? Myself? I'm building a new form and custom confirmation routine at least once a week. We have a nice little setup going with an asp mail program which allows us to really refine our form functionality and confirmation procedures. We've probably got over 300 forms out there that serve various functions, mostly in a Contact Us environment.

I've been researching statistics over the past few weeks and realized that 8 out of 10 people are taking the time to select from a dropdown menu and, fill in a textarea about how they found the site.

The dropdowns are specific to each client but each one contains an <optgroup> listing the major search engines. We have another <optgroup> that talks about referrals and asks them to fill in the other field on who referred them.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the detail that some people went through when completing the How Did You Find Us? area.

Experiences from others?

Example of Dropdown Menu Using <optgroup>

<select name="Find">
<option>Choose One</option>
<optgroup label="Search Engine">
<option value="goo">Google</option>
<option value="yah">Yahoo!</option>
<option value="msn">MSN Search</option>
<option value="aol">AOL Search</option>
<option value="iyp">Internet Yellow Pages</option>
<option value="oth">Other Search Engine - Indicate Below</option>
</optgroup>
<optgroup label="Other">
<option value="tel">Television</option>
<option value="rad">Radio</option>
<option value="fri">Friend</option>
<option value="yel">Yellow Pages</option>
<option value="web">Website Link - Indicate Below</option>
<option value="oth">Other - Indicate Below</option>
</optgroup>
</select>

[Liane]

I use "some" of the same questions ... though I don't use drop down menus. Instead they click a box. The info collected can be interesting, but don't take it as being Gospel. People lie for one reason or another.

I put a small "trick" question on my inquiry form just for the hell of it. The question I used is:

How did you hear about us:

Referred by a friend
Print advertising
Link from another web site
Search Engine  -  Which One?

Since we do not and never have done any print advertising, I am always amused to see that at least 18% click "print advertising". This varies of course and some months go as high as 21% and as low as 11% ... but 18% has been the average over the past year. :)

[Conard]

About 4 years ago I set up an optional form as part of the checkout process on an ecom site.
I was amazed at the number of people that took the time to tick the radio button for "How did you find our site".
I also set up a homegrown tracking system that logged and entered the search engine and term or link that was clicked on plus the date and time and added that data to the merchants email notification of a sale.

Having the 2 sets of data included in the same message resulted in removing the optional form from the site.

Most, like 70% would say they found the site on Alta Vista when in fact they came in from MSN or Google or what ever search engine or link.

I think I'll set the form up again just to see if anything has changed, but my guess is the stats will be skewed by at least 50%.

[mifi601]

Conard -

did you have 'Alta Vista' as the preset and first option?

[Conard]

I had no option set by default and the form was optional.