Web-to-Lead Trail — SmartLite Academy

Unit 1 · Business Problem

Why Web-to-Lead matters

JL

Jamie Lin · Marketing Manager

"Our site gets hundreds of visitors a week. Every single 'Contact Us' submission still gets forwarded as an email that someone on our team has to manually retype into the CRM. We lose leads to typos, delays, and simple human forgetfulness."

Any manual step between a prospect raising their hand and that interest landing in the CRM is a chance for the lead to be lost, delayed, or entered incorrectly.

💡

Business outcome

Every website inquiry becomes a Lead within seconds of submission — zero manual entry, with a complete log for traceability.

Unit 2 · How It Works

Anatomy of a Web-to-Lead template

An admin generates an HTML form snippet tied to a unique, secret post key. The org that owns the template is embedded in that key — so a visitor's browser can submit the form directly to SmartLite with no login and no API key, and the Lead still lands in exactly the right org.

Piece	Role
Template	Defines the field mappings and the public post key
Field mapping	Translates external form field names (e.g. `company`) to CRM field API names (e.g. `company__c`)
Public endpoint	Unauthenticated — access is controlled entirely by the secret, unguessable post key
Submission log	Every attempt is recorded, success or failure, for traceability

⚠️

Treat the post key like a secret

Anyone with the post key can submit Leads into your org. Never expose it in public logs or client-side analytics.

Leads created this way are owned by system rather than a real user — a reliable signal in reports that a Lead originated from the website rather than manual entry.

Unit 3 · Hands-On Challenge

Generate and test a Web-to-Lead form

Open the Lead objectObject Manager → Lead → Sharing tab → Web-to-Lead section.

Map your fieldsMap external form fields like first_name, email, company to their CRM equivalents.

Generate the snippetCopy the ready-to-embed HTML form SmartLite generates for you.

Test itPaste the snippet into a blank local HTML file, open it in a browser, fill it out, and submit.

Verify the resultCheck the Leads list for the new record (owned by "system"), then open the template's submission logs to see the attempt recorded.

Unit 4 · Knowledge Check

Test what you learned

1. How does the public /post/{postKey} endpoint know which org a submission belongs to, with no login?

It doesn't — leads land in a shared inbox for manual sorting

The org is embedded in the template the post key belongs to

The visitor's IP address determines the org

2. Who is listed as the "created by" user for Leads created through Web-to-Lead?

system

The org's admin user

The website visitor's name from the form

Web-to-Lead: Capture Every Website Inquiry Automatically

Why Web-to-Lead matters

Anatomy of a Web-to-Lead template

Generate and test a Web-to-Lead form

Test what you learned

Badge Earned: Demand Capture Specialist