The Copper website contact form is a widget that overlays your company's website and allows you to capture visitors' information so you can nurture those new relationships in Copper.
This article contains general information about the widget and how form responses are captured in Copper.
You can also check out our more detailed articles:
Creating a website contact form – which includes styling your form and widget
Installing the Copper Forms widget on your website – with step-by-step instructions for Squarespace and WordPress sites
The form and form fields
Copper's contact form is pre-configured with the fields you need to start collecting information from website visitors. You are able to make styling changes to the form.
The Name field will populate the First Name and Last Name fields on the Contact record
The Email field will populate the Work Email field on the Contact record
The Message field will be displayed in the activity
This field is optional, your visitors do not have to enter a message to submit the form
At this time, you cannot remove these fields, change their labels, or add additional fields.
The widget
Copper's form is delivered via a widget that overlays your website content – this means it will not push other elements on your website around. The widget is also pre-configured for ease of adoption, but you are able to make styling changes.
Many form solutions provide a large snippet of code that must be placed in a precise location on a single page of your website. This method of embedding can be cumbersome to install and can lead to unexpected styling issues with either the form or your website.
Copper chose to instead deliver the form via a "chat-style" widget that overlays your website to ensure:
The form is easy for your visitors to discover and access
The code snippet is easy to place on your website
The form does not overtake any stylings or shift any elements around on your website
The responses
Form responses are automatically integrated with Copper to create Contacts and Activities.
You can also assign an Owner for new contacts created from form submissions.
Contact creation
Copper's form automatically creates Contacts in Copper. The default Contact Type is Potential Customers, but you can change this when creating your form.
At this time, you cannot choose to create Leads instead. The ability to create Leads from form responses will come in a future release.
Activity creation
As part of this feature, we have released a new Activity Type called Form. Form responses will create Activities with this new Type. A form response also:
Increases the # of Interactions by 1
Sets the Last Contacted date to the date the form submission was received
Form activities display:
On the Contact's Profile and can be filtered on
On the Dashboard under the Company tab, but cannot be filtered on via the activities filter dropdown
We are currently working on a revamp of our Dashboard, which we are calling Feed. When Feed is released, you can view these activities in the Feed and filter on them via a new left-hand menu. Below is a design of the new Feed showing Form responses.
Duplicate management
Form responses will not create duplicate Contacts in Copper. If a person fills out the form on your website and enters an email address that is an exact match to an existing Contact, Copper will:
WILL NOT create a duplicate Contact
WILL create an Activity record and associate it with the existing Contact
WILL NOT change the Contact Type of an existing Contact
For example, if you select "Potential Customers" for Contact creation based on form submissions, and a form is submitted by an existing Contact with the Type "Current Customers", Copper will not update the existing Contact's Type to "Potential Customers".
WILL NOT change the Owner of an existing Contact
WILL NOT change the Name of an existing Contact
For example, if you receive a form submission from "Maggie Cameron" and the email address entered on the form is an exact match to an existing Contact, "Margaret Cameron", Copper will not update the Contact's first name to "Maggie." You will be able to see the form as it was submitted in the Activity, at which point you and your team can decide if you would like to update "Margaret" to "Maggie".
Create a List (saved filter) of form responses
To see all form responses, you can create a List (saved filter) based on the new Activity Type.
You can further refine your List by filtering on Contact Type as well. For example, if you have chosen to have form submissions from new persons created as "Potential Customers" in Copper, then a List that is filtered by Contact Type = Potential Customers and Activity Type = Forms would give you a List of all form submissions from new persons.
For more information on filtering, check out our article on filtering records.
💡 Tip
Professional and Business customers can automatically respond to these new inquiries with an email automation based on this List (saved filter) of form responses.