Most of the people you pay Meta and Google to send to your store will leave without buying. That is normal for any webshop. The expensive part is that most of them also leave without giving you a way to reach them again, so the money spent on their click is gone.

A signup form is the cheapest place to win some of that money back. It is also one of the most neglected parts of the stores we look at.

What the numbers look like

One store we spoke with had spent 260,000 kroner on ads over three months and bought 47,000 visitors with it. Its signup form converted 1.4% of them, which gave around 600 new subscribers. At a conversion rate in line with what we reach for clients, the same traffic would have produced closer to 6,000.

That gap is roughly 5,400 people the store had already paid for, who were interested enough to visit and who it can now only reach by paying for them again.

In the accounts we audit, signup forms often have a submit rate between 0.5% and 5% of the people who see them. In our client accounts, rates between 8% and 19% are common. Two examples from client accounts: one form went from 0.9% to 8.8%, another from 1.5% to 19%.

Why forms convert so poorly

The reasons repeat from store to store.

The form is switched off or broken. It sounds unlikely, and we still find it. One store was spending around 9,000 kroner a day on ads with its popup turned off.

The offer is weak or unclear. "Sign up for our newsletter" gives a visitor no reason to hand over an email address. A clear reason to sign up, whether that is a discount, early access, a guide or a gift with the first order, gives them one.

The timing is wrong. A popup that fires the second someone lands, before they have seen a single product, is closed out of habit. A form that appears after the visitor has shown some interest, or as they are about to leave, meets them at a better moment.

It is the same form for everyone. A returning customer, a first-time visitor from an ad and someone who arrived from a search do not need the same message. Forms that change by traffic source or behaviour can convert better.

It doesn't work well on mobile. Most paid social traffic arrives on a phone. A form designed on a desktop screen and squeezed onto a phone loses many of the people it was built for.

What a better form is worth

Subscribers only matter if something happens after they sign up. In one client account, raising the signup rate from 1.5% to 19% grew welcome flow revenue almost thirteen times within three months. More subscribers fed straight into the emails that turn a new subscriber into a first order.

We go through what that first email should do in What one welcome email can earn from traffic you already paid for.

How to check your own form

Find the submit rate for each signup form in Klaviyo, under signup forms. Compare it with the number of visitors who saw it, and check that the form is live on mobile as well as desktop. If the rate is under 5%, there is very likely money left on the table, and the traffic to win it back is already paid for. For the rest of the account, see How to check a Klaviyo account in 15 minutes.

Where Markeity comes in

A signup form works on traffic you are already buying, which makes it one of the cheapest places to start. If you want to know what your own form should be converting, book a free 15-minute call and bring your visitor and subscriber numbers.