Connecting your website to a CRM: never lose a lead again
Forms, calls, quote requests: how to connect your website to a CRM to track every lead, follow up at the right time and know what actually brings you customers.
By Léo Chuzel · Published on · 3 min read
A contact form that sends an email to a shared inbox: that’s how most small-business websites work. And that’s where leads get lost: a message read on a phone then forgotten, a follow-up never made, a quote sent with no follow-through. Connecting your website to a CRM solves this problem, and finally lets you know where your customers come from.
What exactly is a CRM?
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is software that centralises your contacts and their history: enquiries, exchanges, quotes, appointments, sales. It’s used to track every sales opportunity through to its conclusion. You don’t need a big sales team to find it useful: a tradesperson, a practice or a real estate agency benefit just as much.
What connecting your website and CRM changes day to day
- Every enquiry becomes a record: name, contact details, need, originating page, with no re-entry.
- Nobody is forgotten: the enquiry is assigned to someone, with a reminder task.
- Follow-ups go out on their own: an email if the quote hasn’t had a reply within eight days.
- You know your sources: Google, Google Ads, social media, word of mouth. You invest where it pays off.
Which CRM for a small business?
- HubSpot: a generous free version, very complete, ideal for starting out then growing.
- Pipedrive: focused on the sales pipeline, simple and visual, popular with sales teams.
- Brevo: a lightweight CRM paired with email marketing and SMS, hosted in Europe.
- Axonaut or Sellsy: French solutions that also include quotes, invoicing and cash flow.
- A sector-specific tool: some sectors have their own software (real estate, law firms, healthcare). In that case, that’s what gets connected.
How the connection works
Forms
Your website’s form sends the information directly to the CRM via its API, in addition to or instead of the email. It’s an opportunity to add fields useful for qualification: type of project, budget, timeline. A well-qualified lead means a much more effective first call.
Where the contact came from
The website remembers the source of the visit (Google search, advertising campaign, shared link) and passes it to the CRM with the enquiry. It’s this information that lets you know, six months later, how many customers your SEO has actually brought you.
Appointments and calls
An online appointment booking tool can automatically create the contact and the event in the CRM. Calls can also be tracked, with a number dedicated to the website, for example.
The most useful automations
- An immediate acknowledgement to the lead, with the next steps.
- A notification to the right person depending on the type of enquiry or the geographic area.
- An automatic follow-up on a quote left unanswered.
- A Google review request once the job is done.
- A monthly dashboard: enquiries received, conversion rate, revenue by source.
What about GDPR?
Collecting lead data is allowed, provided you inform people (a notice under the form and a privacy policy), keep only what’s useful and define a retention period. Choosing a tool hosted in Europe also simplifies compliance. We cover these obligations in our article dedicated to GDPR and legal notices.
Where to start?
List everything that happens today between an enquiry on your website and signing a customer. Every manual or forgotten step is a potential automation. We can carry out this diagnosis with you and connect your website to your CRM, whether it’s a new website or your current one. To go further, also find out how to automate your business with Make, Zapier or n8n.