Your website enquiries arrive by email, and that is where they stay. To find out who asked about a quote last Tuesday, you search your inbox. To see whether anyone called them back, you ask around. Nobody can say how many enquiries came in last month without counting by hand.
You do not need a full CRM to fix that. For many small businesses, a Google Sheet that fills itself from the website form is enough: one row per enquiry, a column for who is handling it, and a column for what happened. This post covers the ways to connect the two, how to set the sheet up so people actually use it, and when it is time to move on to something bigger.
Ways to send form entries to a Google Sheet
Use Google Forms
If you are starting from nothing, a Google Form can save responses straight into a Google Sheet, with no plugin and no connector. You can link to the form or embed it on a page.
The downside is that it looks like a Google Form, not part of your website, and you have less control over spam protection and design. It is fine for an event registration or a simple feedback form. For your main enquiry form, a form that matches the site usually serves better.
Use your form plugin’s Google Sheets add-on
Several WordPress form plugins, including WPForms, Gravity Forms and Fluent Forms, offer a Google Sheets add-on or integration, some official and some from third parties. You connect a Google account, choose a spreadsheet, and match each form field to a column. Every new entry adds a row.
This is usually the tidiest option because your form stays exactly as it is. Check whether the add-on is part of a paid plan of the plugin before you plan around it.
Use a connector service
Zapier, Make and similar services can watch for new form entries and add a row to a sheet. They work with almost any form plugin, and the same step can also send a notification to Slack or WhatsApp. They add an extra account to manage, and on free plans the number of tasks is limited, so check the limits against your volume.
Use Google Apps Script
A developer can attach a small script to the sheet that accepts submissions directly from your website. There is no extra service in the middle, but it is custom code, and someone has to fix it if Google or your form changes.
Set the sheet up as a tracker, not a dump
A sheet that only collects rows is just a second inbox. What turns it into a lead tracker is a few columns that your team fills in after the enquiry arrives. A practical layout:
| Column | Filled by | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Date and time | Form | Sorting, and seeing how long people wait |
| Name, email, phone | Form | Contacting the person |
| Message | Form | What they asked for |
| Form or page | Form | Knowing where the enquiry came from |
| Owner | Your team | Who is responsible for the reply |
| Status | Your team | New, contacted, quoted, won, lost |
| Next step and date | Your team | What happens next, and when |
| Notes | Your team | Anything the next person needs to know |
A few Google Sheets features make this much easier to live with:
- Data validation dropdowns for Status and Owner, so everyone uses the same words and you can filter reliably.
- Freeze the header row, so column names stay visible as the list grows.
- Conditional formatting to colour rows still marked “New”, or rows whose next-step date has passed.
- Filter views, so each person can see only their own leads without changing what everyone else sees.
One caution: keep your own columns to the right of the columns the form fills in. Some integrations write to fixed column positions, and inserting a new column in the middle can push incoming data into the wrong place. Add new columns at the end, and test after any change.
Who can see the sheet
A lead tracker is a spreadsheet full of personal data: names, phone numbers, emails and sometimes details people would rather keep private. Treat it that way.
- Share it with named people only. Never set it to “anyone with the link”.
- Give view access to people who only need to read it, and edit access only to those who update it.
- Remove access when someone leaves the business, the same day you remove their email.
- Own the sheet from a business Google account rather than someone’s personal Gmail, so it does not disappear with them.
The form itself should also tell visitors what you do with their details. If you are in India, our post on consent on website forms under the DPDP Act covers what a sensible notice looks like.
Keep the email alert, and test monthly
Do not rely on the sheet alone. The connection can stop working quietly: the Google account that authorised it changes its password or loses access, the add-on needs re-connecting after an update, or someone renames the sheet. The visitor still sees “Thank you”, and nothing arrives.
Keep the email notification switched on as a backup. Once a month, and after any plugin update, submit a test entry and confirm it reaches both the inbox and the sheet. If the form has stopped sending email too, our guide to fixing a WordPress contact form is the place to start. A quick look at the sheet each Monday, checking that the newest row is recent, is another cheap way to notice a gap early.
When a sheet stops being enough
A sheet works well while one to a handful of people handle enquiries and the process is simple. It starts to strain when:
- Several people edit the same rows and overwrite each other’s notes.
- You need reminders, follow-up emails or tasks that happen automatically.
- The same customer appears in many rows and you want one history per person.
- Calls, WhatsApp chats and walk-ins also need tracking alongside web leads.
At that point a CRM does the job better. Our companion post on sending website leads straight into Zoho CRM explains how that connection works. The sheet is not wasted: the column habits your team built, owner, status and next step, carry straight over. The wider guide to what business websites need now shows where this fits among other upgrades.
Getting it set up
Connecting a form to a sheet is a short job when it goes right, and a frustrating one when fields land in the wrong columns. If your WordPress site needs this connected and tested, our WordPress support service can set it up and show you how it works before we hand it over.
Next in this series: Building a Hindi or Bengali Version of Your Website
