Boost your sales and reach out to potential customers by capturing all the necessary information even if users haven't completed the form.
Download and install
- If you haven't already, install and activate the current version of Formidable Forms Premium on your WordPress site.
- After confirming your Formidable Forms license, proceed to the Formidable → Add-Ons page and click the Install button for the Form Abandonment WordPress plugin.
Set up form abandonment
- Go to your form Settings → Form Abandonment.
- Click to toggle Turn on form abandonment to enable the abandonment of forms to capture the entries.
- Click to toggle Only save entries with an email address or phone number provided to monitor the form fields and only capture the entries when an email or phone field exists on the form, and the form submitter fills it.
- Click the Create a recovery email button to create a premade email action for abandonment purposes only, and it will send an email including an entry edit link to a visitor who left the form unsubmitted.
- When the entry is started, the entry status will be set to In progress. This email triggers when the entry is automatically set to Abandoned.
Usage
This shortcode generates a secure link to edit any abandoned entry easily. By default, it is automatically included in the recovering email action.
[frm-signed-edit-link id=[id]]
Parameters
- page_id: Use a specific target page for the signed-out link.
[frm-signed-edit-link page_id=x]
Replace x with the ID of the page.
- label: Customize the label of the URL.
[frm-signed-edit-link label="Click to edit entry"]
- class: Apply a custom class to the link. If no class is specified, the default Formidable style is used.
[frm-signed-edit-link class="class_name_here"]
Entry Status
By default, Formidable includes two entry statuses: Submitted and Draft. This add-on adds In Progress and Abandoned.
In progress means the entry was started, but has not yet been submitted.
If no changes are made for 1 hour, the status will change to Abandoned if the form has not been submitted.
Frequently asked questions
How does the entry status column work for abandoned entries?
When a visitor abandons a form, it captures the entry as In Progress. By default, a cron runs every hour to check if the entry has not been submitted. If it's not submitted, it will trigger the recovery email action (with the edit link shortcode) and set the entry status to Abandoned.
Could customers exclude some fields from being captured as abandoned entries?
Yes. By default, passwords and credit cards are not saved. You can exclude more fields with the frm_abandonment_exclude_field_types hook.
What happens to abandoned entries when the add-in is deactivated?
If you deactivate the Form Abandonment add-on, the entry status will be changed from Abandoned to Draft. Once you reactivate the add-on, it will display as Abandoned or In Progress again.
Does the link to edit an entry expire?
The recovery link has no expiration. It will no longer work when the abandoned entry is deleted or submitted.
How secure is the recovery link?
We used open SSL with aes-256-ctr encryption, a secure way to protect a link as long as it is not accidentally exposed.
Related developer hooks
- Change the default 1 hour between in progress cron job to abandoned with the frm_mark_abandonment_entries_period hook.
- Exclude some fields from being captured as abandoned entries with the frm_abandonment_exclude_field_types hook.