Improve Your Conversion Rate & User Engagement With reCAPTCHA V3

The internet has become the place where we work, play, socialise and more, however, we're not alone. The internet is filled with bots trying to trick systems at scale and spam websites by creating accounts, leaving reviews, filling in lead forms and much more. No website is safe from these bots, Instagram and Twitter are filled with bot accounts and even smaller websites feel the need to add spam protection to keep these bots bay. 

One of the best ways to keep the bots out and the users in your digital clubhouse is to make use of a reCAPTCHA form. I think we all know what these are, if not where have you been using the internet? Every day we all do our fair share of proving to various sites that we're human. Fill in a world, complete some math, play some Sudoku or hangman, figure out what your partner wants for their birthday, it really has become a painful exercise that we have to do daily.

The problem with previous reCAPTCHA forms

While reCAPTCHA forms do the job 95% of the time to keep spam and bots at bay, it also tends to keep the humans away too. As digital marketers and user experience researchers, we can attest to the fact that adding one extra step to a form or process will see users find one extra step to give up on. Let's face it reCAPTCHA V2 is annoying for the user, especially if you didn't get it right the first 3-5 times. Then its a frustration no one is willing to deal with, stuck in an endless loop of proof forms is no way to live your life. 

Introducing reCAPTCHA V3

In a bid to save our sanity and what is left of our mortal souls, Google has updated its Recaptcha verification tool to its third version. Version 3 allows website owners to weed out harmful traffic generated by bots without even requiring visitors to prove they’re human. The change also makes it easier for website visitors to log into their favourite sites without the wasted time and frustration of having to solve a puzzle to prove they’re a real human each time.

Can we get a hallelujah? 

What is reCAPTCHA V3?

reCAPTCHA is a free service provided by Google that protects your website from spam and abuse. reCAPTCHA uses an advanced risk analysis engine and adaptive challenges to keep automated software from engaging in abusive activities on your site.

Version 3 is a much-needed improvement that lets your valid users pass through with ease. This helps you detect abusive traffic on your website without any user friction. It returns a score based on the interactions with your website and provides you more flexibility to take appropriate actions.

How does reCAPTCHA V3 work?

Recaptcha v3 returns a score for each request without user friction. The score is based on interactions with your site and enables you to take appropriate action for your site. Recaptcha will rank traffic and interactions based on a score of 0.0 to 1.0, with a 1.0 being a good interaction and scores closer to 0.0 indicating a good likelihood that the traffic was generated by bots.

Website owners can generate scripts to perform automated actions based on the traffic score. For instance, if Recaptcha v3 returns a low score, a website owner can use a script to require two-factor authentication or email verification as a login requirement for their sites. 

As Recaptcha v3 doesn’t ever interrupt the user flow, you can first run Recaptcha without taking action and then decide on thresholds by looking at your traffic in the admin console. By default, you can use a threshold of 0.5.

Applying reCAPTCHA V3 to your site

When applied to product review pages, reCAPTCHA helps to maintain the integrity of the website by being able to identify and filter fake reviews that are posted by bots. By using Recaptcha’s adaptive risk analysis engine takes in various signals about the interactions and predicts the likelihood the request was generated by a bot.

The new dynamic reCAPTCHA works best with context on how both humans and bots interact with your website. So for best performance, Google recommends site owners include Recaptcha in many places as possible.

For users and web surfers, the best part about Recaptcha v3 is that it eliminates friction when users log into sites as they no longer have to prove that they are human by checking on a box, typing in verification codes that are difficult to read, or performing puzzles.

A short review of how reCAPTCHA v3 works

How to install reCAPTCHA V3

To install reCAPTCHA V3 on your site you will need to follow these instructions

• Visit Google reCAPTCHA
• Sign in with a Gmail or create an account
• Register your site
• Choose reCAPTCHA v3 as your type
• Add your label and domain name
• Click save

You should then be presented with two snippets of code, one for the head tag of the site and the other where you want the reCAPTCHA to be hosted. This could be in a contact form, a review form or a sign-up form.

Place the code on your site and you that's all there is to it. For more detailed instructions check out the developer notes by Google

Works well with others

If you're using a WordPress website with contact forms like Contact form 7 or Gravity Forms then all you would need is the Site Key and Secret Key. Place them in the relevant fields provided by the plugin and click save.

Stop the bot, not the user

We all want more leads but sifting through spam is just really not worth all the trouble for 1 or 2 possible leads. You would rather annoy your visitors by forcing them to prove they are real than deal with spam and unfortunately this does lead to lower conversion rates, which has been proven by various UX studies.

Now with reCAPTCHA v3, you don't have to make the sacrifice, you can remain relatively bot and spam free with the ability to make your own adjustments on the fly and reduce fiction to conversion for you real users, it really is a win for all parties involved. 

Contact us

If you want to know more about tracking options for your site, don’t be shy we’re happy to assist. Simply contact us

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If you require a more detailed guide on how to create your profile or your listing, then we highly recommend you check out the following articles. 

• How to create a nichemarketer profile 
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Recommended reading

If you enjoyed this post and have a little extra time to improve your skills, here are some related posts on all things reCAPTCHA and Wordpress.

• How To Actually Integrate Contact Form 7 And Google reCAPTCHA V2
• Track Contact Form 7 Conversions via Google Analytics in 2 Minutes
• Improve Your Conversion Rate & User Engagement With reCAPTCHA V3
• How To Use The Classic Editor After Upgrading To WordPress 5
• https://www.nichemarket.co.za/blog/nichemarket-advice/resolve-vcruntime140-dll-error-wamp
• Quickly Resolve WP-VCD Malware Attack on Wordpress

Tags: conversion optimisation , user experience