SYSTEMS
Your website should feed your CRM, not your inbox
A website that sends enquiries to an inbox is a brochure. NEVDEV in Phuket explains what happens when the website is built as part of the business's systems: forms that pre-qualify, bookings that land in the CRM, and nothing retyped.
Article
Most business websites send every enquiry to an email inbox. Somebody reads it, copies the details into a spreadsheet or a CRM, replies by hand, and hopes they remember to follow up. The website looks finished. The work behind it has not started. NEVDEV builds websites as part of the business's systems, so the enquiry does the work instead of the person.
What a brochure website does
It looks right. It has a contact form. The form sends an email. That is where it stops. Every enquiry is then a manual job, and the busier the business gets, the more of them fall through.
What a connected website does
- The form asks the questions that decide whether this is a good enquiry: dates, group size, budget range, what they need
- The enquiry lands in the CRM as a record, with a stage and an owner, not as an email
- The customer gets an instant, specific reply, not "we will be in touch"
- The follow-up is scheduled the moment the enquiry arrives
- The owner can see, in one place, how many enquiries came in this week and what happened to them
Why it is usually built the wrong way round
Websites are often built by a designer, and the CRM is chosen later by someone else, and the two never meet. NEVDEV builds the website and the system behind it as one job, so the form and the CRM are designed together. It is not more expensive. It is the same work done in the right order.
The same rule for Instagram and WhatsApp
Enquiries that come through Instagram or WhatsApp should land in the same place, the same way. An enquiry is an enquiry whether it came through a form or a DM. If the CRM only knows about the website ones, the numbers are wrong and the follow-ups are missed.
How to tell if yours is a brochure
Ask two questions. How many enquiries did we get last month? What happened to each one? If answering takes more than a minute, the website is sending work to people that a system should be doing.
A website connected to the business behind it is the difference between a site that gets visits and a site that gets customers.