Trail Map › Use-Case Catalog › Web-to-Lead
🌐 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.

4
Tabs
~10 min
Time to Complete
80 pts
Available
1 Badge
Demand Capture Specialist

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. 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.

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.

PieceWhat it does
TemplateA saved setup that says how form fields map to CRM fields, and holds the public post key
Field mappingMatches the field names from your website form (e.g. company) to the matching field in the CRM (e.g. company__c)
Public submission linkNo login needed to use it — it's protected only by the secret, hard-to-guess post key
Submission logA 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.

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.

Open the Lead objectGo to Object Manager → Lead → Sharing tab → Web-to-Lead section.
Map your fieldsMatch the form fields you'll use on your website, like first_name, email, and company, to the matching CRM fields.
Generate the snippetSmartLite writes a ready-to-use piece of HTML form code for you — just copy it.
Test itPaste that code into a blank local HTML file, open it in a browser, fill out the form, and submit it — just like a real visitor would.
Verify the resultCheck the Leads list for your new record (owned by "system"), then open the template's submission logs to see your test recorded there too.

Day-to-day: marketing

Embed the form and forget itOnce the snippet is live on your site, every submission arrives as a Lead automatically — nothing to check manually.
Check the submission log if something looks offIf leads seem to be missing, check the log for failed submissions first.

Day-to-day: sales

Work "system"-owned leads like any otherThey convert the same way as any other Lead — see the Lead-to-Cash Trail.
🎯
What to try next
Continue to the Lead-to-Cash Trail to turn a captured Lead into a real customer record and deal.

Test what you learned

1. With no login at all, how does SmartLite know which org a form submission belongs to?
It doesn't — every lead lands in one shared inbox for someone to sort by hand
The post key is tied to one specific template, and that template belongs to one org
The visitor's IP address determines the org
2. Who shows up as the "owner" for Leads created through Web-to-Lead?
system
The org's admin user
The website visitor's name from the form