Foundation · Module 18
Web-to-Lead
Capture Every Website Inquiry Automatically
A "Lead" is a person who might want to buy from you — like someone who filled out a "Contact Us" form on your website. How to turn any website form into a live feed of Leads, automatically. No one has to log in, no one has to retype anything, and every submission gets recorded.
About & Business Case #
Why Web-to-Lead matters #
"Our site gets hundreds of visitors a week. Every single 'Contact Us' submission still gets forwarded as an email. Someone on our team has to manually retype it into the CRM. We lose leads to typos, delays, and simple human forgetfulness."
A "CRM" (Customer Relationship Management system) is the software your team uses to track every person and company you're selling to. Right now, Jamie's team has to copy information from an email into the CRM by hand.
Every manual step between a visitor showing interest and that interest landing in the CRM is a chance to lose it. A lead can get lost, delayed, or typed in wrong.
What you'll achieve
Every website inquiry becomes a Lead within seconds. No one has to type anything in by hand, and there's a complete record of every submission.
Implementation #
What's inside a Web-to-Lead template #
Let's break down how this works, piece by piece. An "org" (short for organization) is your company's own private space inside SmartLite — your data never mixes with any other company's.
An admin (someone with special setup permissions) creates a small piece of code called a Web-to-Lead template. That code is tied to a unique, secret ID called a post key. The post key tells SmartLite which org the form belongs to. That means a visitor's web browser can submit the form straight to SmartLite with no login at all, and the new Lead still lands in exactly the right org.
| Piece | What it does |
|---|---|
| Template | A saved setup that says how form fields map to CRM fields, and holds the public post key |
| Field mapping | Matches the field names from your website form (e.g. company) to the matching field in the CRM (e.g. company__c) |
| Public submission link | No login needed to use it — it's protected only by the secret, hard-to-guess post key |
| Submission log | A running list of every attempt, whether it succeeded or failed, so you can check back on it later |
Treat the post key like a password
Anyone who has the post key can submit Leads into your org. Never post it somewhere public, like in website analytics tools or public logs. If your org has more than one form, the short link that uses your org's name always uses your oldest active form; use each form's own snippet to send leads to a specific form.
Leads created this way show system as the "owner" instead of a real person's name. That's a simple way to spot, later on, that a Lead came from the website instead of being typed in by hand.
1 Generate and test a Web-to-Lead form #
Let's build one yourself. "Object Manager" is the area of SmartLite where admins configure how each type of record — like Lead — behaves.
first_name, email, and company, to the matching CRM fields.How to Use #
Day-to-day: marketing #
Day-to-day: sales #
What to try next
Continue to the Lead-to-Cash Trail to turn a captured Lead into a real customer record and deal.
Quiz #
Test what you learned #
system