The potential of form improvement for generating more test-drive leads

This benchmark report highlights a clear opportunity for automotive brands in France: to drive more qualified leads to dealerships by optimising their test-drive request forms. The test-drive form is a crucial conversion point — it bridges online interest and the physical dealership visit, and it is one of the most important steps in turning a browser into a buyer. Yet despite heavy paid-media investment to bring visitors to these pages, engagement at the form itself remains low.

What are the average performance rates of test-drive forms?

• Only 11% of visitors who land on a test-drive form actually start filling it in — 89% leave without engaging.
• Of those who start, an average of 47% reach the submit button.
• Ultimately, only 5% of visitors complete the form and convert into a lead.

Source: Exatom Automotive Industry Analytics, Q4 2024

This points to a major inefficiency in marketing ROI. Poorly designed forms create unnecessary friction — through excessive fields, confusing multi-step journeys, slow performance or accessibility barriers — leading to user frustration and abandonment. Conversely, well-optimised forms reduce friction and ensure more high-quality leads reach dealerships.

Research method

The analysis was carried out using the Exatom form-audit engine, which focuses on a technical evaluation of the form’s HTML structure. It does not take into account actual user behaviour. Unlike the earlier Dutch and UK editions, which covered a fixed list of the largest OEM brands, this French edition set out to cover every car brand actively sold in France — mainstream, premium, luxury and the new wave of Chinese entrants. In total 63 brands were researched. The research covered the desktop test-drive forms on each brand’s official French site, concentrating on the personal-information section of each form. Data was collected in July 2026.

Of the 63 brands researched, 51 offer a live online test-drive request form in France, and 45 of those could be scored by the audit engine. Six could not be read automatically: Volkswagen, Smart, Bentley and Mitsubishi block third-party audit scripts, while Porsche (which only offers dealer-level forms) and Subaru defeat the engine through shadow-DOM structures or script blocking. Their design attributes were still assessed manually.

Test-drive forms: there is no consensus about the ideal form

As in the Netherlands and the UK, the French market shows no agreed standard. Brands split roughly 60/40 between single-step forms (favouring speed and simplicity) and multi-step journeys (which guide the user but risk abandonment when too long). Dealer locators are near-universal but vary widely — postal-code lookups that silently route the lead, distance-ranked lists, and interactive maps. The number of personal-data fields ranges from four to eight, with a median of five — a much tighter spread than in the UK. French forms also almost universally add a civilité (title) selector, a market convention largely absent in the UK.

Accessibility and performance remain weak spots for many brands — important given the European Accessibility Act benchmark for inclusive digital experiences — while the strongest forms combine fast load times, clean field alignment, labels above inputs and correct HTML input types.

How did the brands score?

Across the 45 brands that could be scored, the average overall audit score was 5.5 out of 10. Cupra and Omoda & Jaecoo share the lead (6.6) — a remarkable result for Omoda & Jaecoo, which only entered the French market in 2025 — followed by Aston Martin and Seat (6.5), and BMW, Honda and Land Rover (6.4). At the other end, Škoda scores lowest (4.1), with Alpine and Xpeng (4.2), BYD (4.3) and Polestar (4.5) also in the bottom group.

Key findings from the French market

• Performance is the industry’s biggest shared weakness: the category average is just 4.3, with web standards close behind at 4.6. Style is a French strength, averaging 6.5.
• Not one of the 45 scored forms auto-focuses the first field, and 40 of 45 run no captcha at all.
• 30 of 45 forms miss the correct email input type — yet 15 French forms do use it, a far better rate than the UK, where only one brand did.
• Only seven brands carry the browsed model through to the form: Renault, Dacia, Alpine, MG, Ineos, Lotus and Polestar.
• Only ten of the 51 live forms let users pick a preferred date and time — about one in five, fewer than in the UK.
• Around 16 brands require an explicit consent or attestation tick before submitting; the majority rely on implied consent.
• The French Stellantis FCA wizard (Fiat, Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Jeep and Lancia) asks for personal details before the dealer is chosen — the reverse of best practice, which banks the low-effort choices first.

Two structural findings

First, France’s two domestic groups sit at opposite ends of several rankings. The Renault Group’s booking platform (Renault 6.2, Dacia 6.0) is among the strongest flows in the market, with real slot booking, while Stellantis’ legacy-PSA forms (Peugeot 5.0, Citroën 4.9) and its FCA wizard (Fiat 5.1) rank in the bottom half, and Alpine (4.2) is nearly last.

Second, the new Chinese entrants split sharply. Omoda & Jaecoo lead the entire market, while Xpeng, Zeekr, BYD and Leapmotor occupy four of the bottom eight places — largely because their visually modern, app-style forms ignore basic HTML standards such as proper form structure and labels.

How real users behave: the behavioural benchmark

The audit predicts friction from the code; Exatom’s behavioural benchmark shows what real visitors actually do. Built from aggregated, anonymised analytics of live test-drive request forms across more than ten automotive brands in Europe, it reveals where visitors start, autofill, hesitate, make errors and abandon.
• Completion is hard-won: even the strongest brand converts only 26% of the visitors it engages, and the median brand just 7%.
• Errors are widespread: at the median, one in five interactions (21%) hits a validation error — and at the worst-performing brand, 58% do.
• The consent / opt-in field is the single biggest abandonment risk, with drop-off reaching 69% at the worst brand. That matters in France, where sixteen brands gate submission behind a required tick.
• Autofill is under-exploited: even on simple name and email fields, the median brand sees only 40–50% of users benefit.

Source: Exatom Industry Benchmark, Q1 2026 — Automotive, Mobility & Transportation, ‘Test-drive request’ category, aggregated across 10+ European brands

Conclusion: a direct revenue opportunity

The best-performing brands succeed by focusing on speed, usability and standards compliance. Lower scorers tend to have outdated or inconsistent designs — or ultra-modern ones that skipped the basics. This leaves plenty of room to improve: brands that simplify their forms, carry the browsed model through, fix performance and follow modern HTML best practice will be better positioned to convert visitors into dealership leads. Optimising test-drive request forms is not just a UX project — it is a direct revenue opportunity.

How Exatom helps automotive brands win more test-drive leads

A test-drive request is one of the highest-intent moments in the entire automotive funnel — yet, as this benchmark shows, that decisive last step is where most brands quietly lose leads. Exatom’s cookieless, GDPR-compliant platform shows how real prospects interact with every field — where they hesitate, re-type or abandon — pinpoints the exact friction costing conversions, and validates each fix with built-in A/B testing. The result is more completed test-drive requests from the same traffic and ad spend. More than ten OEM automotive brands already trust Exatom to optimise their lead-generation forms.