Getting someone to your website is only the first step.
They find your business, look through your services, decide they’re interested and fill out your contact form.
Great. You have a new lead.
But what happens next?
For many businesses, that information simply gets sent to an email inbox. Someone has to see the email, keep track of the customer, remember to follow up and make sure the lead doesn’t get forgotten.
There’s a much better way to handle this.
Connecting your website directly to a CRM can turn your website from a simple lead generator into an actual part of your sales process.
What Is a CRM?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.
It’s a system that helps businesses keep track of leads and customers in one place.
Instead of having customer information scattered between emails, spreadsheets, text messages and handwritten notes, a CRM gives you one place to manage it.
Depending on the CRM you use, you can keep track of things like:
- Customer names
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Services they’re interested in
- When they contacted you
- Previous conversations
- Quotes
- Appointments
- Follow ups
- Where they are in your sales process
But a CRM becomes much more useful when it’s connected directly to your website.
What Happens When Your Website Is Connected to Your CRM?
Let’s say someone visits your website at 9:00 PM and requests a quote.
Without a CRM integration, you might receive an email containing their information.
That’s it.
Someone still needs to take that information and decide what to do with it.
When your website is connected to your CRM, the process can happen automatically.
The customer submits the form and their information is immediately added to your CRM.
Your team can open the CRM the next morning and see the new lead along with their contact information and what they’re interested in.
Depending on your setup, you can take the automation even further.
The customer could receive a confirmation email or text message, your sales team could be notified and a follow up task could automatically be created.
All of this can happen within seconds of someone contacting your business.
Stop Losing Leads in Your Inbox
One of the biggest problems with relying entirely on email is that it’s easy for leads to get buried.
You might receive a contact form submission while you’re busy.
You tell yourself you’ll respond later.
A few more emails come in.
A day passes.
By the time you remember, that person may have already contacted another company.
A CRM gives every lead somewhere to go.
Instead of relying on someone remembering that an email came in, you can clearly see which leads are new, which have been contacted and which still require a follow up.
Keep Your Customer Information Organized
As your business grows, managing leads manually becomes harder.
If you’re receiving one inquiry every few weeks, keeping track of everything through email might work.
If you’re receiving several inquiries every day, things can get messy quickly.
Who has already been called?
Who requested a quote?
Who needs a follow up tomorrow?
Which leads never responded?
Which customers booked?
A CRM helps answer those questions without searching through hundreds of emails.
Follow Up With Leads Faster
Speed matters when someone requests information from a business.
A person requesting a quote from your website may also be looking at two or three competitors.
Connecting your website to your CRM makes it possible to create a much faster follow up process.
For example:
Customer submits a quote request
↓
Their information is automatically added to your CRM
↓
Your team is notified
↓
The customer receives confirmation
↓
A follow up task is created
Now there’s an actual process behind every website inquiry.
Your Website Should Work With the Rest of Your Business
A website shouldn’t exist by itself.
It should work with the tools your business already uses.
Your website can potentially connect with your CRM, calendar, email marketing platform, quoting system and other software.
The exact setup will depend on your business and the systems you use.
The important part is that information shouldn’t have to be manually moved from one system to another every time someone contacts you.
The more of that process you can automate, the more time your team can spend actually speaking with customers.
Do You Need a CRM Integration?
Not every business needs a complicated sales system.
But if your website regularly generates inquiries, quote requests, consultation bookings or other leads, connecting those leads directly to a CRM is worth considering.
This is especially useful for service businesses where following up is a major part of turning an inquiry into a paying customer.
Your website shouldn’t just look professional.
It should help your business operate more efficiently.
At Forward Web Craft, we build websites with the systems behind them in mind. That can include connecting your website to your CRM and setting up the flow of information between your website and the tools your business already uses.
The goal is simple:
Someone contacts your business through your website, and their information goes exactly where it needs to go.