What Is EFO? Average Benchmarks and 7 Ways to Improve It
Even when you put real effort into driving traffic, inquiries and sign-ups may not grow the way you'd expect. When that happens, your input forms are worth a close look. A hard-to-use form drives away visitors who were genuinely interested, leading to significant lost opportunities. This is where EFO (Entry Form Optimization) comes in. This article clearly explains what EFO means, benchmark averages such as form abandonment and completion rates, and seven concrete ways to improve your conversion rate (CVR).
EFO stands for Entry Form Optimization. It refers to the overall set of measures for making input forms—such as contact, document-request, sign-up, and purchase forms—easier for users to understand and complete, thereby raising the completion rate (conversion rate).
An input form is the final touchpoint where a website visitor takes a concrete action. Users who reach this point have a high level of interest in your product or service and are very close to converting. However, if they feel stressed because there are too many fields, errors are confusing, or the process is cumbersome, they drop off just one step short of the goal. EFO is the practice of removing these "hidden sources of stress" one by one to prevent missed opportunities.
Compared with acquisition measures such as advertising and content production, EFO can be tackled with relatively little effort while being directly tied to conversions. The main reasons are as follows.
Before working on EFO, it's important to understand how your own form's numbers compare with general benchmarks. Here are the key indicators to use as a guide.
The form abandonment rate is the percentage of users who reach a form but leave without completing it. Generally, it is said that roughly 60–80% of users who reach a form leave without completing it, and depending on the form type, around 40–70% is often used as a guide. In other words, it's not unusual for only about 2 to 4 out of every 10 people who open a form to actually reach the submit step.
The form abandonment rate can be calculated with the following formula.
Form abandonment rate (%) = number of abandonments ÷ number of form arrivals × 100
The flip side of the abandonment rate is the completion (pass-through) rate. For BtoB contact and document-request forms, a pass-through rate of around 25–30% is often used as one benchmark for an optimized form. If you fall below this level, there is likely significant room for improvement. Conversely, a form that has not been optimized may be losing more than 70% of its users.
Benchmarks for abandonment and pass-through rates also vary by industry and form type. The general tendencies are as follows.
These are only guides. What matters more than comparing yourself with others is continuously measuring your own numbers and understanding how they change before and after improvements.
To carry out effective EFO, you first need to understand why users drop off. The typical factors are as follows.
From here, we introduce seven concrete ways to lower the form abandonment rate and raise CVR. You don't need to do them all at once; it's best to prioritize the ones with the biggest impact.
The most fundamental and highest-impact EFO measure is reducing the number of input fields. Keep only the truly necessary fields, and either remove optional fields or clearly mark them as "optional." By narrowing fields down to the minimum required for your goal—such as name, email address, and inquiry details—you can greatly reduce the psychological and physical burden of filling them in.
Input-assistance features—such as auto-filling the address from a postal code, auto-displaying phonetic readings, and automatic conversion between full-width and half-width characters—greatly reduce the user's effort. The effect of auto-fill is especially pronounced on smartphones, where text entry is more burdensome. For fields with fixed choices, using dropdowns or date pickers also helps prevent input errors.
Errors are a major cause of abandonment. Rather than showing them all at once after submission, notify users of errors in real time as they type and highlight the relevant field. It's also important to make messages specific about what to fix and how—for example, "Please enter half-width numbers" rather than a vague "Invalid input format."
If your form is split into multiple steps, use a progress bar or step indicator to show "which stage you're at now" and "how many fields remain." Seeing the goal keeps users motivated and prevents mid-way abandonment. Clearly indicating the input goal is also effective for removing user anxiety.
On the input page, minimize links that lead away from the form, such as header navigation, sidebars, and footer links. Creating an environment where users can concentrate on filling in the form helps prevent drop-off to other pages. It's also effective to show a confirmation message when a user accidentally tries to leave during input, or to temporarily save what they've entered.
Today, many users access forms from smartphones. Make input fields and buttons large enough to tap easily with a finger, and configure them so the appropriate keyboard appears for each field (for example, a numeric keyboard for number fields). Even if a form looks fine on a PC, it's often hard to use on a smartphone, so checking on an actual device is essential.
EFO is not a one-and-done task. Measuring which fields see the most drop-off, forming a hypothesis, improving, and verifying the result—continuing to run this PDCA cycle is what leads to results. By comparing multiple patterns with A/B testing, you can make improvements based on data rather than gut feeling.
Many of the measures introduced here can be implemented efficiently with an EFO tool. There are many tools that let you add features—such as real-time error display, address auto-fill, exit-prevention pop-ups, and per-field abandonment analysis—without writing code. If your development resources are limited, or if you want to improve your forms on an ongoing basis, introducing a tool is also worth considering.
EFO is effective for improving conversions, but optimizing the form alone can sometimes hit a ceiling. Check whether there are problems with the path to the form (such as the clarity of your CTA) and whether the pages before the form have issues. Also, if your post-submission inquiry handling and follow-up are inefficient, you won't be able to make the most of the results. A whole-picture perspective that includes what comes before and after the form is important.
EFO (Entry Form Optimization) is the practice of improving input forms to be easier to use, preventing drop-off, and raising the conversion rate. Many of the users who reach a form (commonly said to be 60–80%) leave without completing it, and in BtoB a pass-through rate of 25–30% is used as a benchmark for optimization.
The first step to improvement is to measure your own form's abandonment and pass-through rates and understand the current state. From there, start with the highest-impact of the seven methods in this article—such as reducing fields, adding input assistance, and improving error messages. A steady accumulation of small improvements is the shortest path to growing results without increasing your ad spend.
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