A Deep Dive Into Sitecore XM Cloud Form Analytics
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital experience platforms, Sitecore continues to innovate with its XM Cloud offering. One of the standout features is the robust analytics capabilities, including form analytics, which provide valuable insights into user engagement and performance across digital properties. Let's explore how Sitecore XM Cloud form analytics works, how it differs from the legacy Web Forms for Marketers (WFFM).
XM Cloud Pages Analyze Overview
XM Cloud Pages Analyze is a comprehensive analytics solution that allows you to monitor the performance of your digital properties and assess the impact of changes you make. This data-driven approach enables you to base important business decisions on meaningful insights.
- XM Cloud Analyze: Provides page analytics for specific pages or comparisons between a page and its variants. Data refreshes every minute.
- XM Cloud Analytics: Offers site-wide analytics and form analytics. Site data refreshes every minute, while form data refreshes every 15 minutes.
- Form Analytics: Tracks user engagement with forms, providing detailed insights into form performance.
Important Note: To enable XM Cloud Pages Analyze and Pages Analytics, you must create a site identifier and assign it to your website in the XM Cloud Dashboard Settings. For consolidated analytics across multiple sites, you can assign the same site identifier to several sites.
How Sitecore XM Cloud Form Analytics Works
Sitecore XM Cloud form analytics is designed to automatically capture and analyze data from all active forms used in Pages and Components. The system tracks user interactions through various events, providing a comprehensive view of form performance over time.
- Automated Data Capture: The system automatically collects data on form views, interactions, and submissions without requiring manual setup.
- Real-time Analytics Dashboard: A user-friendly dashboard displays key metrics and allows for easy filtering and customization of data views.
- Event-based Tracking: The analytics engine captures three primary events:
VIEWED: Recorded when a form is loaded and visible to a userINTERACTION: Logged when a user clicks or interacts with any form elementSUBMITTED: Captured when a form is successfully submitted
- Flexible Time Range Selection: Users can analyze data over various time periods, from hours to months, or even custom date ranges. However, visits and events data is only available for the last 30 days.
- Site and Form-specific Filtering: The ability to filter data by site and specific forms allows for granular analysis.
- Trend Analysis: The system compares current data with previous periods, highlighting trends with color-coded indicators.
- Comprehensive Metrics: Beyond basic view and submission counts, the analytics provide derived metrics such as interaction rates, submission rates, and abandonment rates.
- Visual Data Representation: A line chart displays event trends over time, allowing for easy visualization of form performance.
- Data Export: Analytics data can be downloaded as a ZIP file for further analysis or reporting.
- Regular Data Refresh: Form analytics data is refreshed every 15 minutes, ensuring relatively up-to-date insights.
Differences From Web Forms for Marketers (WFFM)
Sitecore XM Cloud form analytics represents a significant evolution from the older WFFM system:
- Cloud-native Architecture: Unlike WFFM, which was primarily designed for on-premises deployments, XM Cloud form analytics is built for cloud environments, offering better scalability and performance.
- Automatic Event Tracking: XM Cloud automatically captures form events, whereas WFFM often required manual setup of goals and events for tracking.
- Real-time Insights: The XM Cloud dashboard provides near real-time data with 15-minute refresh intervals for forms, a significant improvement over WFFM's often delayed reporting.
- Unified Analytics: XM Cloud integrates form analytics directly into the main analytics dashboard, providing a more cohesive view of overall site performance.
- Enhanced Metrics: XM Cloud offers more sophisticated metrics like interaction rates and abandon rates, which were not readily available in WFFM.
- Modern UI: The XM Cloud analytics interface is more intuitive and user-friendly compared to the older WFFM reports.
Maximizing Form Performance with Sitecore XM Cloud Analytics
In conclusion, Sitecore XM Cloud form analytics represents a significant advancement in form performance tracking and analysis. Its automated, comprehensive, and user-friendly approach offers valuable insights that can drive improvements in form design and overall user experience. The integration with broader site analytics and the ability to consolidate multi-site data further enhance its value for complex digital ecosystems.
For those interested in learning more about the form building capabilities of Sitecore XM Cloud, I recommend reading the article - Introduction to the Sitecore XM Cloud Forms Builder. This resource provides valuable insights into the form creation process and available features, which can help you make the most of the analytics data discussed in this post.
