Mastering External Website Tracking: HubSpot Forms vs. Custom Behavioral Events for Your Online Store

Unlocking Deeper Insights: When to Use HubSpot's Native Tracking vs. Custom Behavioral Events

Ever found yourself staring at your HubSpot portal, scratching your head, and wondering how to track that one specific action on your external website? You’re not alone. It’s a common scenario, especially for RevOps professionals, marketers, and online store operators who are diligently trying to piece together the full customer journey.

Recently, a fascinating discussion popped up in the HubSpot Community, highlighting a common point of confusion: tracking form submissions on external sites using custom behavioral events. The original poster asked, "How do I listen for a successful form submission event on our external site to trigger a custom behavioral event?" They were using embedded HubSpot forms but hosting their website elsewhere, a setup many of us are familiar with, particularly those running an elementor online store or other external e-commerce platforms.

The Simple Truth: HubSpot's Native Form Tracking is Powerful

The beauty of HubSpot often lies in its native capabilities, which, if leveraged correctly, can save you a ton of development time and headaches. This was precisely the insight shared by a helpful community member in response to the original question. They pointed out that, for the most part, HubSpot should log form submission information natively.

Think about it: HubSpot is designed to be your all-in-one CRM and marketing platform. Its embedded forms aren't just pretty faces collecting data; they're smart tools that communicate directly with your HubSpot portal. As long as you have the essential HubSpot tracking code correctly embedded on your external website – which you'd need anyway to use those embedded forms – HubSpot is already doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

This means you typically don't need to set up custom behavioral events just to see when someone submits a HubSpot form. That data is already flowing in!

Where to Find Your Form Submission Data

So, if you're not creating custom events, where does this data live? It’s readily available right within your HubSpot portal:

• On the Form Itself: Navigate to Marketing > Lead Capture > Forms. Select your form, and you'll see a 'Submissions' tab detailing every submission.
• On Individual Contact Records: Every time a known contact submits a form, that activity is logged directly on their contact timeline. This provides a rich history of their interactions, crucial for sales and service teams.
• In Reports: HubSpot's reporting tools allow you to create custom reports on form submissions, helping you analyze performance over time, by source, or by contact property.

A senior community moderator further reinforced this by sharing a valuable resource on how to style and embed HubSpot forms on an external site, emphasizing the importance of correct implementation for native tracking.

When Do You Need Custom Behavioral Events?

While HubSpot's native form tracking is robust, there are many scenarios where custom behavioral events become indispensable. These events allow you to track specific, non-form interactions that are vital for understanding the full customer journey, especially for e-commerce and complex web applications. Consider using custom behavioral events when you need to track:

• Specific Button Clicks: Beyond form submissions, like a 'Download Whitepaper' button that doesn't lead to a form, or a 'Request Demo' button that triggers a third-party application.
• Video Engagement: Tracking when a user starts, pauses, or completes a video on your site.
• Scroll Depth: Understanding how far users scroll down a long-form content page.
• Specific Product Views: For an elementor online store or any e-commerce site, tracking when a user views a specific product category, a 'best-seller' item, or a particular product page. This is crucial for segmenting audiences for targeted upsell or cross-sell campaigns.
• Add-to-Cart / Remove-from-Cart: While ESHOPMAN integrates deeply with HubSpot Commerce, if you're using a highly customized external cart, tracking these actions can provide valuable insights into purchase intent and abandonment.
• Completion of Multi-Step Processes: Beyond a single form, tracking progress through a multi-page checkout, an application process, or an interactive tool.
• User Interactions with Custom Widgets or Features: Any unique element on your site that provides value but isn't a standard form.

Implementing Custom Behavioral Events: A Quick Guide

Setting up custom behavioral events involves two main steps:

1. Define the Event in HubSpot: In your HubSpot portal, navigate to Reports > Analytics Tools > Behavioral Events. Click 'Create event' and define its name, description, and the type of event (e.g., 'Clicked element,' 'Visited URL,' or 'Manually tracked event'). For most custom interactions, 'Manually tracked event' is your go-to.
2. Implement the Tracking Code on Your External Site: Once defined, HubSpot provides a JavaScript snippet. You'll need to embed this snippet on your external website, triggered by the specific user action you want to track.

Here's a basic example of how you might track a button click for a 'Product Demo Request' that doesn't use a HubSpot form:

Request Product X Demo

Or, to track a specific product view on an external e-commerce page:

These events then appear on contact timelines, can be used in lists, workflows, and custom reports, empowering your RevOps and sales teams with granular data.

Connecting the Dots for ESHOPMAN Users

For ESHOPMAN users, leveraging both native HubSpot tracking and custom behavioral events is paramount for optimizing your online storefront. While ESHOPMAN seamlessly integrates your e-commerce data with HubSpot CRM, understanding customer behavior on your external site – whether it's an Elementor-built landing page or a custom product configurator – allows you to:

• Segment More Precisely: Create hyper-targeted lists based on specific product views, video engagement, or content consumption.
• Automate Personalization: Trigger workflows that send personalized emails, offer discounts on previously viewed items, or assign contacts to sales reps based on high-intent actions.
• Improve Reporting: Gain a holistic view of the customer journey, from initial website visit to purchase, identifying bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement.
• Enhance Sales Enablement: Provide your sales team with a richer context of a lead's interests and engagement, allowing for more relevant outreach.

Best Practices for Effective Tracking

• Ensure HubSpot Tracking Code is Everywhere: This is the foundation for all tracking.
• Plan Your Events: Don't track everything. Identify key actions that align with your business goals and customer journey stages.
• Name Events Clearly: Use descriptive names and properties for your custom events so they're easy to understand and report on.
• Test Thoroughly: Always test your custom events to ensure they are firing correctly and data is appearing in HubSpot.
• Review Regularly: Periodically review your tracking setup to ensure it's still relevant and accurate as your website and business evolve.

By strategically employing both HubSpot's powerful native tracking for embedded forms and custom behavioral events for unique interactions, you can build a comprehensive understanding of your customers, drive more intelligent automation, and ultimately, grow your online store with ESHOPMAN.