Why is CAPTCHA killing your conversion rate?

You already know how important the SEO of your site is. Of course, apart from links, rankings and preventive efforts to avoid Google pets, great user experience is a must. And you’re committed to do whatever it takes to improve it. Does your form have a CAPTCHA?

If your answer is yes, maybe you aren’t taking care of your users the way they deserve. Actually, CAPTCHAs might be killing your conversion rate. Would you like to know why? Read on to know the main reasons why and some alternatives to a CAPTCHA.

CAPTCHA: No spam, no conversions

Picture it. You’ve designed the perfect form: with the right number of fields, integrations, and a great UX. You’ve thought about every single detail. And you don’t want any spam in return. Only humans can use your form. So you add that element destined to prevent robots: CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). Have you ever thought about how humans react to it? We hate it! They are usually responsible for the give-up rate of your form. And there are many reasons why…

1. CAPTCHAs are hard for machines… And for humans as well

CAPTCHAs' main mission is to prevent spam. So they use tests that are difficult to complete for robots. But they are also complicated for humans. They usually ask annoying questions, e.g. “Are you a robot?”. Or they ask users to type a text based on a crazy image where characters are mixed. What about audios? This option might be even crazier. It’s too hard to understand what they say. Why do users give up on your form when you have a CAPTCHA? In short, there are many reasons why:

• Users hate wasting their time. Visual CAPTCHAs usually take many seconds to complete. Audio CAPTCHAs take even much longer. Users prefer to give up on your form. Anything is better than keep on fighting to demonstrate that you are a human.
• Some CAPTCHAs require too much effort. They need translation, time to load…
• CAPTCHAs aren’t usually user-friendly for visually impaired users. The situation is even worse for them. Therefore, your CAPTCHA might have a negative effect on your conversion rate. Actually, some people have already stated that their conversion rate had increased after turning off their CAPTCHA.

Is it a CAPTCHA or another ad?

Some websites and companies even use CAPTCHA to push an advert to the users. Sometimes they just present an image or a video and they ask to type a sentence related to it.

Other times, they proceed with a video. They can have a specific purpose, e.g., copying a descriptive sentence into a box below, or they must watch it for a certain amount of time before continuing. Guess what? Users hate it. And your technological barrier is terrifying them, so they are running away. Is this a fair price to pay in order to avoid a few items of spam? Think about it carefully.

4 alternatives to CAPTCHA

Okay. Certainly, CAPTCHA disrupts the user experience and hurts your conversion rate. But you don’t want to choose between your conversion rate and spambots. What can you do then? Try alternatives

• ReCAPTCHA only requires a single click. This free Google service does not interrupt the user experience and it is effective against spam robots.
• Social media login has multiple advantages. They confirm the user is a human and their identity is automatically verified. Users don’t need to add this info again and, therefore, the conversion process is accelerated. When you use this, it is important to add a message that states what you are going to do with users' data.
• A honeypot doesn’t disrupt the user experience at all. It simply requires to add a hidden field to your form. Humans don’t see it, so they won’t fill it. But spambots will automatically fill it in.

Arengu forms are captcha-less and they help you to prevent more than 95% of spambots. Our technology injects the form in JavaScript at the moment the page is loading instead of putting directly in the HTML code of the page. Most of the spambots aren’t able to process JavaScript because it’s more difficult.

Plus, you can integrate your Arengu forms with other services, and add sophisticated logic to them: magic links, one-time passwords, automatic email verification... Try them now for free and find out all you can do with Arengu!