Web forms: enquiries from your website land straight in the pipeline

With web forms in Advanzo, an enquiry from your website does not land as an email in someone's inbox. It lands as a contact, a company and a deal in your pipeline. You build the form from one of seven templates, embed it with a snippet or share it as a link, and every submission creates the records automatically. A workflow adds the follow-up task, so the enquiry gets a reply the same day.

This post is for small teams in Switzerland with their own website who receive enquiries today through a contact form or by email and copy them into the CRM by hand, or not at all.

The problem today: the contact form sends an email, and then what?

Almost every website has a contact form. Almost every contact form sends an email to info@. And in many businesses that is where the automation ends.

The email lands between newsletters and supplier invoices. Someone reads it, maybe the same day, maybe on Monday. Then that person types name, company and phone number into the CRM, if they remember. Often the enquiry stays in the inbox and is answered straight from the mail program. The lead never appears in the CRM. At the weekly review the pipeline counts 18 deals; in reality there are 25.

Add typos in email addresses, lost attachments and the question of which form actually triggered the enquiry: the price request, the demo booking or the support form. What is missing is the connection between form and pipeline.

How Swiss companies handle inbound enquiries without applying pressure is covered in inbound the Swiss way.

What a web form inside the CRM does differently

A web form in Advanzo is not a foreign object you connect through an interface. It is part of the CRM. The form's fields correspond to the fields on contact, company and deal, including your custom fields. A submission creates the records directly, with the values from the form.

On top of that, the form inherits the workspace brand. Logo, colours and fonts are set without you writing CSS. If you run several brands, each form takes the brand it belongs to. And because contact and deal live in the same system as your mailbox, the first reply is attached to the enquiry automatically.

Because every deal from the form sits in the pipeline, you can measure the website like a sales channel. A saved view shows all deals from forms, and a dashboard shows how many of them were won or lost and how long they sat in the «Enquiry» stage. That is the number that tells you whether the website sells or only counts visitors.

The seven templates and what to use them for

Advanzo ships with seven form templates. You adjust fields and texts, but you do not start from zero.

• Contact: the classic form for the contact page. Name, company, email, message.
• B2B lead capture: for landing pages and downloads. Asks for company, role and company size, so the fit rating has something to work with later.
• Demo request: for software and products that need explaining. Preferred date and team size included.
• Newsletter signup: one field, one click, one new contact with a tag.
• Event registration: for workshops, webinars and customer events. Attendees become contacts, with their company.
• Quote request: for trades, construction and service providers. Project description, budget range, time window.
• Support: for existing customers, so that requests after the sale live in the CRM and not in a separate inbox.

You embed all seven templates with a snippet in any website and any CMS, whether Webflow, WordPress or a hand-built page. Or you share the form as a hosted link, for example in an email signature or behind a QR code at a trade fair stand.

How to build a web form in Advanzo

Step 1: Choose a template

Pick the template that matches the purpose of the page. For the contact page the «Contact» template, for a price request the «Quote request». If you only want one form, take the quote request: it asks for the details you need for a deal anyway.

Step 2: Adjust the fields

Remove what you do not need and add what is missing. Every field corresponds to a field in the CRM. If you need something of your own, such as «Property type» or «Preferred start date», create a custom field on the deal and add it to the form. Five to seven fields are usually enough; every extra field costs submissions.

Step 3: Check brand and texts

The form takes over the logo, colours and font of your brand. Check the title, the field labels and the text on the button. «Request a quote» brings in more submissions than «Submit».

Step 4: Embed or share the link

Copy the snippet and paste it where you want it on your website. In Webflow or WordPress that is an embed element. Alternatively, use the hosted link if the website should not be touched or if the form belongs on a flyer or in a signature.

Step 5: Test submission

Fill in the form yourself, with a test company such as «Praxis am See». Then check in Advanzo: does the contact exist? The company? Is the deal in the right pipeline and stage? Are the custom fields filled correctly on the deal? Correct anything before the form goes live.

Step 6: Workflow for the follow-up task

Create a workflow: when a deal is created, then create a task «First contact» due the next working day. The task appears in the responsible person's agenda, with a reminder. If the team should know immediately, the same workflow fires a webhook into your Slack or Teams channel. More rules of this kind are in automating repetitive sales tasks.

Checklist: is your web form set up properly?

• The form is based on the template that matches the purpose of the page.
• It asks for at most seven fields, and every field has a counterpart in the CRM.
• A test submission created contact, company and deal in the right stage.
• The button says what happens: «Request a quote», «Book a demo», «Reserve a seat».
• Logo, colours and font match the brand of the website.
• A workflow creates a task with a due date for every new deal.
• One person is responsible for working through those tasks daily.
• A saved view shows every deal from web forms in the last 30 days.
• The dashboard shows how many of those deals were won or lost.

Mini scenario: residential construction company with 8 people in Lucerne

Seegarten Wohnbau AG in Lucerne builds and renovates apartment buildings. Eight employees, four of them with customer contact: the managing director, two project managers and one person in the back office. Around 30 enquiries a month come in through the website, most of them via the website builder's contact form. The emails go to info@, and the back office types them into the CRM. In the last quarter an estimated two to three enquiries a month were lost because they sat between other emails. With an average project value of CHF 85,000 and a win rate of one order per eight enquiries, every lost enquiry costs around CHF 10,600 on paper.

The switch: the old contact form is replaced by the Advanzo web form «Quote request», embedded with the snippet, with the custom fields «Property type» and «Preferred start date». A workflow creates a task «First contact by tomorrow» for the back office for every new deal. The four people now work in Advanzo. After the first month: 31 enquiries, 31 deals in the «Enquiry» stage, none of them lost, first contact after five working hours on average. On the dashboard the managing director sees for the first time that 40 percent of quote requests concern renovations, not new builds.

Typical mistakes with web forms

• Too many fields: a form with twelve required fields gets abandoned. Ask only for what you need for the first contact; the rest you clarify in the conversation.
• Form live, but nobody responsible: without a workflow and without a responsible person, the deals sit in the pipeline the way the emails used to sit in the inbox.
• No test submission: if you never fill in the form yourself, you only notice with a customer that a field lands in the wrong column.
• Wrong template: a support form for new-customer enquiries asks for a customer number the prospect does not have.
• Keeping the old form running alongside: two forms on the same page means two entry channels. Replace the old form completely.
• Phone as a required field: many prospects abandon the form when they have to give a number. Make the field optional and ask at first contact.
• Not measuring the source: if you do not measure how many form deals are won, you do not know whether the website sells.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need coding skills for the web form?

No. You choose a template, adjust the fields and copy a snippet into your website. Anyone who can embed a YouTube video can embed an Advanzo form. If the website should not be touched at all, use the hosted link.

Can I ask for my own fields?

Yes. Custom fields on contacts, companies and deals are available in the form. So you can have details such as property type, team size or preferred start date written straight into the deal, without typing them in afterwards.

Does the form look like my website?

The form inherits the logo, colours and fonts of the brand you have stored in Advanzo. If you run several brands in one workspace, each form gets the brand it belongs to. You do not need to write CSS for that.

Who finds out that an enquiry has arrived?

You handle that with a workflow. When a deal is created, it creates a task for the responsible person, who receives a notification in the app and by email. The same workflow can also send a webhook to Slack, Teams, Make or n8n. There is no native Slack app; the webhook takes that role.

Does Autopilot help with enquiries from the form?

Yes. The deal from the form is an open deal, and Autopilot reads open deals. It rates the fit against your ideal customer profile, proposes tasks and a reply draft, and puts everything into the approval inbox. Nothing is sent or moved until a person approves. How to qualify leads after that is covered in lead management software for Switzerland.

If you want to try this in Advanzo: advanzo.app.