How to connect your website enquiries to your CRM

Where enquiries get lost

• The form sends an email to a shared inbox, and everyone assumes someone else replied.
• The email goes to one person, who is on leave or busy.
• The details are copied by hand into a spreadsheet, and some are never copied.
• Phone calls and messages are not recorded anywhere.
• Nobody knows which page or advertisement the enquiry came from.

What to capture with each enquiry

Beyond the name, contact details and message, capture where the enquiry came from. This is what lets you see later which work brings in real customers.

• Source: search, advertisement, social, referral or direct.
• Page: the page the person was on when they sent the form.
• Campaign: the campaign or advertisement, if there was one.
• Service: what the person asked about.
• Date and time of the enquiry.

From the form to the CRM record

The form on your website sends its data to the CRM through a connection, and you can connect your website to a custom CRM so the record carries the source and page. When someone presses send, a new record is created, or an existing record is updated if the person is already known.

Plan for the exceptions. What happens if the same person sends two forms? What if the connection fails for a few minutes? A sound setup keeps a copy of the enquiry and tries again, so a short outage does not have to mean a lost enquiry. It also checks for duplicates, and a person can review anything that does not match.

If you are also planning changes to your website, it helps to design the form and the CRM together. Our website development work includes forms that send enquiries to where your team works.

Alerts and the next action

A new record is only useful if someone acts on it. Decide who owns new enquiries, how they are told (an email, a message or a task), and how quickly they should reply. Then set a next action with a date.

A simple rule helps: no enquiry should sit without an owner and a next action. If an alert is not answered in the time you set, it can pass to a second person.

Calls and chat

Not every enquiry comes through the form. If customers call or send messages, record those too. At the least, the person who took the call adds a record with the same fields. Some phone and chat tools can create records for you, and this depends on the tool and its settings.

Reports by source

When each record carries its source, the CRM can show you how many enquiries each source brought, how many became quotes, and how many became jobs. That is a better guide for your marketing than a count of website visits.

Keep the report simple. Three views are enough to start: enquiries by source, enquiries that reached a quote, and jobs won by source.

Test the whole path before you rely on it

After the connection is built, test it from the visitor's side. Fill in the form on each page that has one, using a test name that is easy to find later, and check that the record appears with the right source, the right page and the right owner.

Test the awkward cases as well: a form with a missing field, a second form from the same person, and a form sent from a phone. Check that the alert reaches the right person. Repeat the test whenever the website or the CRM changes, because a small change on either side can quietly break the link.

Keep the form short

Each extra question on a form can lower the number of people who finish it. Ask only for what your team needs to reply well, such as a name, a way to reach the person and a short message, and let the CRM collect the rest, like the page and the source, in the background.

If you need more detail, ask for it in your first reply. A short form that works every time is better than a long one that people leave.

Consent and privacy

A form collects personal information, so treat it with care. Tell people what you collect and why, and link to your privacy policy next to the form. Collect only what you need to reply.

Decide who in your team can see the records, how long you keep them, and how you remove a person's details if they ask. Check the requirements that apply to your business, and talk to a professional adviser if you are unsure.