Can your website talk to your CRM? What an integration involves

Someone fills in the form on your website. An email lands in a shared inbox. Someone copies the details into the CRM, usually later, sometimes not at all. Then sales asks where the lead came from, and nobody can say.

That’s the problem website CRM integration solves. It isn’t a technical project with a business benefit tacked on. It’s a business problem that happens to need some code.

The copy and paste problem

Your systems each know part of the story. A person joins them up by hand.

The CRM knows who your customers are. The finance system knows what they’ve bought. The booking system knows what’s free. Your website knows none of it.

So someone copies things across, and becomes the only person who knows how it all fits together. It happens because each system was bought on its own, for one team’s job. Nobody was ever asked to make them talk.

What the copying is costing you

The cost isn’t the typing. It’s what you can’t see because of it.

• Enquiries go missing. They sit in an inbox, get copied late or not at all, and the slowest reply loses the work.
• Nobody can say what the website brings in. If the source isn’t recorded when the enquiry arrives, it’s gone. So the website looks like a cost, not a channel.
• The same thing lives in three places. Prices, events, contact details. At least one of them is wrong right now.
• It all depends on one person. When they’re off, it stops. When they leave, the knowledge goes with them.
• Reports take a day and still get argued over. Every system gives a different number, so the meeting is about the numbers instead of the decisions.

What doesn’t fix it

Most quick fixes just move the copying somewhere else.

“A new CRM will sort it.” A new system that still doesn’t talk to the website is the same problem with a new login.

“There’s a plugin for that.” Sometimes. Often it sends a form somewhere and stops there. When it breaks, it breaks quietly, and nobody notices for weeks.

“We’ll have to replace everything.” Rarely. The systems you’ve got usually hold the answer. They just aren’t connected.

“It’s just a form.” The form is the easy part. Deciding where the information goes, who owns it and what happens next is the real work.

What website CRM integration actually means

Connecting means each piece of information has one home, and everything else reads from it.

In practice that comes down to three decisions:

• Which system owns what. Customer details live in the CRM. Prices live in finance. The website reads them rather than keeping its own copy.
• Which way it flows. Enquiries go from the website into the CRM. Events or prices come from your systems onto the website. Some things go both ways.
• What happens when it fails. Every connection needs a plan for the day the other end stops answering, so the site shows the last good version, not an error.

Most business software has a way in for other software, which developers call an API. Where it doesn’t, there’s usually still a route, such as a scheduled export. If something can’t be connected properly, you should hear that in week one, not year three.

Common integrations for B2B firms

Most start with enquiries, then find the next thing that’s typed in twice.

• Enquiries into the CRM. Tagged with where they came from and sent to whoever follows up, instead of a shared inbox.
• Events, listings and news. Updated on the site when they change in the system that owns them.
• Live prices, stock or availability. Pulled from your finance or operations system (often called an ERP), so there’s one version and it’s the right one.
• Bookings. Showing what’s actually free, not what was free when someone last updated the page.
• Client or member logins. Customers see what’s theirs, drawn from the system that already holds it.
• Reporting. Website activity joined to pipeline and revenue, so you can show what marketing brought in. That’s our connected data and reporting work.

If someone keeps a spreadsheet to bridge the gap, that’s usually the next thing to go. More on that in if it lives in a spreadsheet, there’s a better way.

What it costs and how long it takes

The price depends on your systems, not on your website.

We quote per project, because the range is wide. Sending enquiries into a CRM is a different job from a portal with logins and permissions.

What moves the price: how many systems are involved, whether they have a way in, which direction the information flows, and how much has to keep working when something goes wrong. We can tell you roughly which end of the range you’re at, and whether it can be connected at all, before anyone writes a specification.

Timescales get agreed up front and held to. As Felicity Blades at Colmore Life put it: “Project management was highly effective throughout, with clear communication, structured phases, and regular check-ins ensuring the project stayed on track despite a tight turnaround.”

What changes afterwards

The website stops being a brochure and starts knowing what your business knows.

That’s what our web applications and integrations service builds, quoted per project, against the systems you already run on. Replacing them is a last resort, not the opening suggestion.

• Nobody types it in twice. Information updates on the site when it changes in the system that owns it.
• Enquiries land where sales work. Tagged and attributed, so you can show what the website brings in.
• It doesn’t stop when someone’s off. The connection does the job one person was holding together by hand.
• It fails safely. If the other end stops answering, the site keeps working.
• You own it. Documented, handed over, no lock-in.