The Top 4 Ways to Implement Gravity Forms Conversion Tracking

Gravity Forms is a popular WordPress plugin that simplifies the process of creating forms on your website. From basic contact forms to complex surveys, you’ll find plenty of features to meet various needs, but one bit of functionality missing from the core Gravity Forms plugin is conversion tracking. That’s where add-ons come in!

Understanding how users interact with your forms provides important insights into customer behavior, helps optimize your conversions, shows you what’s working and what’s not, and more. These are the top four ways to implement Gravity Forms conversion tracking so you can get an accurate view of how users interact with your website.

But First, Why Does It Matter?

Tracking user interactions with your forms is crucial for optimizing your website’s performance and improving conversion rates. Otherwise, you’re left guessing where visitors came from. By implementing conversion tracking with Gravity Forms, you can:

• Monitor User Behavior – Understand how users navigate through the form and identify drop-off points.
• Improve Form Design – Data on user interactions helps you streamline forms, removing unnecessary fields or steps that could be hindering conversions.
• Measure Campaign Success – If you’re using forms for lead generation or specific marketing campaigns, conversion tracking allows you to see which campaigns are driving form submissions.
• Optimize Conversion – By identifying where users are disengaging, you can implement changes that increase form completions and, ultimately, conversions.
• Make Data-Driven Decisions – With real-time data from conversion tracking, you can base website improvements on actual user behavior rather than assumptions.

#4 – Custom JavaScript for Gravity Forms Conversion Tracking

If you prefer more control over your tracking or want to track custom events that aren’t covered by tools like Google Tag Manager (GTM), custom JavaScript is an effective solution. With JavaScript, you can monitor form submissions, field engagement, and errors directly in your code, then send this data to your analytics platform.

The general approach involves adding JavaScript or jQuery code that listens for form-related events (in other words, it watches for certain actions to happen on the page). For example, Gravity Forms provides a useful JavaScript hook, gform_confirmation_loaded, that can detect when a form is successfully submitted. In this case, the hook is a way to attach custom behavior to a specific action. You can add an event listener to trigger custom tracking code when this event occurs.

So to sum it up:

• A user fills out and submits the form, and Gravity Forms shows a confirmation message. This action triggers the gform_confirmation_loaded event.
• Your event listener detects this and executes your custom code to record the form submission or send data to an analytics tool.

For those comfortable with JavaScript, this approach can be a powerful way to track user interactions and form events, but for less technically inclined users, it may be worth considering alternatives or having a pro set it up for you.

#3 – Adding a Form Submission Trigger in Google Tag Manager

One of the most popular ways to track Gravity Forms events is by integrating them with Google Analytics using Google Tag Manager (GTM). GTM allows you to set up custom event triggers that fire when users interact with your form. You can track actions such as when users:

• View a form
• Begin filling out a form
• Submit a form

By defining these actions as custom events in GTM, you can see detailed data on form interactions within your Google Analytics reports.

The nice thing about GTM is that instead of manually adding tracking scripts to each form page, it allows you to set up triggers and tags in a centralized dashboard. You can track activity in real time and customize tracking based on various conditions like form submission, form abandonment, specific form fields, and more. This flexibility means you have the option to tailor tracking to meet specific goals.

While GTM offers flexibility, it can also be complex to set up, especially for users who aren’t familiar with its interface and functionality (or the other Google tools with which it’s compatible). 

Setting up advanced triggers and tags requires a good understanding of how GTM works, which may require more time than you care to invest. 

Adding additional tracking scripts through GTM can also impact website performance, especially if not optimized correctly. Each additional script adds to the page load time, which can affect user experience and SEO rankings.

#2 – 1st-Party Gravity Forms Add-Ons

Gravity Forms created and maintains a number of 1st-party add-ons, which are simple tools that you can add to your Gravity Forms plugin to enhance its features. These add-ons come with built-in settings that let you easily enable new functions, like tracking form submissions or user interactions. After installing an add-on, you can find new options in the Gravity Forms editor, making it easy to set up tracking or connect to other services like Google Analytics or Zapier without needing extra coding.

For conversion tracking specifically, some of the most useful Gravity Forms add-ons include:

• Google Analytics Add-On – Tracks form submissions as events in Google Analytics.
• Webhooks Add-On – Sends real-time form data to third-party tools that support webhooks, enabling flexible tracking.
• Zapier Add-On – Automates form submission tracking by integrating with third-party services such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and marketing tools.

#1 – Super Useful Referral Tracking & Google Ads Tracking Plugins for Gravity Forms

Our own plugins win the #1 spot for Gravity Forms conversion tracking – who would have guessed? 🙂

But in all seriousness, these plugins tackle most of the common cons mentioned above by being both powerful and easy to install. Even without knowledge of plugins and how to install them, our Google Ads & Referral Tracking for Gravity Forms plugins can be set up in less than five minutes.

Google Ads Tracking for Gravity Forms – With just a few clicks, all your forms can have Google Ads referral tracking enabled. Our plugin uses first-click attribution, ensuring you know where visitors originated from, even if they submitted a form on a different page. Unlike the Google Analytics add-on*, this plugin adds valuable data directly into your form entries to help with conversion tracking and allows you to export and analyze the data for better ad targeting.

* For the most accurate tracking and reports, we recommend using both plugins. Learn why here.

Referral Tracking for Gravity Forms – This plugin makes it easy to see if your leads come from Google Ads, Google organic, Facebook, Bing, or other sources with just a five-minute setup. Once installed, all Gravity Forms will have advanced referral tracking to show you the original source of each submission.

With first-click attribution for accurate ROI reporting, you can export data, debug conversion issues, and improve your ad targeting by importing the data into Google Ads or other platforms.