Lead capture
From website enquiry to follow-up, without an enquiry going missing
Every form on our website, and each of our five free tools, sends enquiries straight into the pipeline our team works from. This is how an enquiry is caught, checked, announced and followed up.
Ayush Jain, Founder
Published
The system at a glance
- Sources recorded
- 7, from contact form to free tools
- Rate limit
- 5 submissions a minute per IP
- Stages
- New, Contacted, Qualified, Won or Lost
- Alerts
- Email, plus optional WhatsApp
What it replaces
Most small firms do this job by hand, with the tools already on the desk. This is that version, next to the system.
Without it
The usual version
- Form submissions land in a shared inbox, between newsletters and supplier invoices
- Someone copies the promising ones into a spreadsheet, when they remember
- Nobody is quite sure who replied, or whether anyone did
- Spam gets through the form, so the real enquiries are harder to spot
- Starting a quote means retyping the enquiry into another document
With it
With the system
- Every form and free tool posts straight to our API, and the enquiry is saved before anything else happens
- Each lead records where it came from and any campaign tags on the link
- Our team gets a branded email with a direct link to the lead, and an optional WhatsApp alert
- Leads move through clear stages, with an owner, timestamped notes and search
- A quote starts from the lead with one button
How it works
Step by step, in the order it happens.
Capture
The contact form, the quote form and the five free tools all send to the same endpoint. Consent is required, and each lead records its source and any UTM campaign tags.
Filter the noise
A hidden honeypot field, simple checks such as a link in a name or more than three links in a message, a limit of five submissions a minute per IP address, and a 32 KB size cap. Spam and real enquiries get the same response, so bots learn nothing.
Save first, then tell someone
The lead is stored before any alert is sent. A branded email then goes to our staff mailbox with a link straight to the lead, and, where it is switched on, a WhatsApp alert goes to our own staff number. The person who enquired is never messaged on WhatsApp.
Work the pipeline
New, Contacted, Qualified, then Won, or Lost from any active stage. Staff filter and search, assign a lead to themselves and add timestamped notes.
Turn it into a quote
One button starts a quote from the lead, and the quote stays linked to the enquiry it came from.
See what needs attention
The dashboard shows new leads, quotes awaiting a decision, unpaid invoices and the outstanding balance, so the day starts with what is waiting.
Safeguards we built in
The parts nobody sees until something goes wrong. They are what make it safe to use with real clients and real money.
- The lead is saved before any alert is attempted, so a failed email or WhatsApp message never loses an enquiry
- Alert channels are isolated, so one failing does not stop the other
- Emails are queued and sent in the background, with retries
- Spam and genuine submissions get an identical response
- The server refuses stage moves that do not make sense, Won and Lost are final, and final moves ask for confirmation
- WhatsApp alerts only ever go to our own staff number, never to the person who enquired
- Staff passwords are at least 12 characters, and login errors never reveal whether an account exists
The stack
- Next.js website
- ASP.NET Core API
- PostgreSQL
- React portal
- Azure Communication Services email
- WhatsApp alerts, optional
What we learned
What building it taught us, and what we would tell anyone building the same thing.
- 01
Save the enquiry before doing anything clever with it. Alerts, emails and integrations all fail sometimes; the one thing that must not fail is keeping the lead.
- 02
Do not tell a bot it has been caught. Giving spam the same response as a real enquiry means there is nothing to learn from trying again.
- 03
Make wrong moves impossible rather than discouraged. When the server refuses a stage change that does not make sense, the pipeline stays trustworthy without anyone policing it.
- 04
Record the source from the first enquiry. Knowing which form or tool a lead came from costs nothing to capture, and cannot be reconstructed afterwards.
The same pipeline, built for your enquiries
Whether enquiries arrive through a website form, a booking page or a marketplace, the shape is the same: catch it, filter it, tell the right person and make the next step obvious. We connect the places your enquiries already come from, rather than asking you to move them.