Case Study: Lead Generation & CRM

From
Visitor
to Customer

An end-to-end system for small business owners: Smart Forms capture the right information, Lead Management scores every lead and drafts the reply. One connected experience, not two features bolted together.

Lead Management dashboard on desktop
Lead Management dashboard on mobile A lead's detail view on mobile
Role
Lead Product Designer
Product
Jimdo
Scope
Lead Management + Smart Forms
Year
2023–2024
80%
Of paying users are service businesses
60 to 80k
Daily active users across the platform
15.8%
Detractor adoption, the highest NPS segment
12%
Passive NPS users adopted at launch
The Problem

Small business owners are losing leads every day

80% of Jimdo's paying users run service-based businesses: yoga teachers, coaches, consultants, photographers. They have a website but no real system for capturing or following up with enquiries. A generic contact form is not enough.

Two core problems: Forms are generic and collect the wrong information, and even when leads arrive, there is no system to manage, prioritise, or act on them intelligently.
Wrong questions, wrong leads
Users copy basic templates. They collect name and email but miss the signals that tell them who is a serious lead.
🖺
Follow-up is manual and inconsistent
Users respond from their personal inbox, forget to follow up, and lose visibility after the first reply.
🎯
No sense of lead quality
Every enquiry is treated the same. There is no way to know who is ready to buy versus who is just browsing.
Time is the biggest constraint
Small business owners wear every hat. They need systems that surface the right action at the right moment.
User Personas

Two users, one shared problem

Research validated two distinct personas with different relationships to lead management, but the same underlying pain.

Marketer Mike
Side Hustler
He's after quality, not quantity
"I spend more time filtering bad enquiries than actually closing good ones."
Manages the website for a small business. Wants better lead quality from contact forms. Frustrated by irrelevant enquiries wasting his time.
Owner Olivia
Business Owner
She's wearing every hat
"I am the teacher, the admin, and the marketer. I need the product to think ahead so I do not have to."
Runs a service business solo. No time for manual lead management. Needs AI to surface the right action without her having to ask for it.
Customer Journey

One system, from first click to paying customer

Five moments decide whether a lead turns into a customer. Losing any one of them costs the business real revenue.

01
Visitor arrives
Finds the site, reads about the service.
02
Fills a Smart Form
AI-generated questions, not a generic contact form.
03
Lead lands in Lead Management
Scored automatically, no manual triage.
04
AI drafts the reply
A first response ready before the owner opens their inbox.
05
Lead becomes a customer
One tap to send, book, or follow up.
Smart Forms

Where the journey starts

The answer was AI-driven form generation. A user types a brief description: the AI generates the form, the fields, and the logic. No template-hunting, no guessing what to ask.

AI Form Generation
Describe the form in one sentence. AI generates questions, field types, and logic automatically, tailored to the business type.
Core Feature
📋
Smart Question Types
Multi-choice, date picker, budget input, availability selector: the right input for every question, instead of one generic text field.
Beta
📁
Business Templates
Registration, Quote, Inquiry, Consultation, Event Sign-up: pre-built starting points for every service type.
Shipped
Recommended Forms
The website editor surfaces a recommended form type based on the business category, reducing time-to-first-form to under 60 seconds.
Shipped
📲
Mobile-Responsive Builder
Every form built in the editor is automatically optimised for mobile, no extra configuration needed.
Shipped
🏁
Thank You Screen
Custom end screen with message, redirect option, and next-step prompt, turning form completion into a relationship moment.
Beta
Step 01
Discover Smart Forms
The feature as a store owner first finds it: setup, lead quality, and message management in one view.
The Smart Forms feature page as it appears to a store owner
Step 02
Choose your starting point
Choose between an AI-generated form tailored to your business, or start from a template for a faster build.
Step 03
Tell the AI what you need
A conversational chat interface. The user types a brief description, for example "I need a registration form for my yoga classes", and the AI generates all the questions, field types, and logic in seconds.
Step 04
Review and customise
The generated form opens in the live builder. Users can reorder questions, change field types, mark fields as required, and preview exactly how it looks to a visitor, all in one place.
Step 05
Live on the website
Published registration form for a yoga day event. The form reflects the brand voice, not a generic template dropped on a page.
Live on the website
Step 06
Lead lands in Lead Management
Every submission flows straight into the dashboard, automatically scored and prioritised. No manual triage needed.
Lead Management dashboard showing the new submission
Step 07
AI drafts the reply
The product reads the enquiry and drafts a response before the owner opens their inbox. One tap to send.
Lead detail page with an AI-drafted reply
Mobile Experience

Built mobile-first, not mobile-adapted

Most Jimdo store owners aren't at a desk. Forms, dashboards, and AI replies all needed to work the same way on a phone as they do on a laptop: visible from the first screen, not bolted on at the end.

Smart Forms feature announcement on mobile, AI version Smart Forms home screen on mobile, AI recommended Building a registration form on mobile, with an AI-suggested welcome message Lead Management dashboard on mobile Customer leads list on mobile AI suggested reply on mobile
Customer Leads CRM

Small business owners don't need a Salesforce. They need a system that tells them what to do next.

Every submission, however it arrives, flows into a dashboard where the platform does the analysis: scoring leads, surfacing actions, and flagging opportunities the owner would otherwise miss.

Customer Leads dashboard on desktop

Lead scores, a follow-up prompt, and an upsell opportunity the owner hadn't noticed, all on one screen.

Customer Leads dashboard on mobile

The same intelligence on mobile, not a stripped-down view.

AI-Assisted Responses

The right action, at the right moment

The co-pilot doesn't just flag a lead, it reads the enquiry and drafts the reply. Here's Jane Cooper's enquiry, and what the CRM suggested before anyone typed a word.

Jane Cooper's lead detail on desktop with an AI-drafted reply

No inbox digging. No manual triage. The product reads the form answers and writes a first draft.

Jane Cooper's lead detail on mobile with an AI-drafted reply
Adoption & Impact

Adopted by the users we needed most

Smart Forms launched to Jimdo's 60 to 80k daily active users. The adoption data told a sharper story than we expected, and surfaced a significant opportunity.

Detractors and Passive users, the two groups most at risk of churning, were the highest adopters at 15.8% and 12% respectively. This suggested the feature was addressing a genuine unmet need, and pointed clearly to retention as the primary value lever.

📈
Established websites led adoption
Their session transaction rate increased: more leads captured per visit, without needing more traffic.
💌
More websites got their first submission
Users who previously had zero enquiries were now capturing leads for the first time. Net new engagement, not cannibalisation.
Contact forms stayed flat
Traditional contact form usage didn't drop. Smart Forms added a new acquisition layer rather than replacing an existing one.
🔎
Free-to-paid impact: <1%
Negligible conversion lift, confirming this is a retention and engagement feature, not an acquisition driver. That clarity shaped roadmap prioritisation.
Beta Learnings

What the data taught us

Three learnings from the beta that reshaped how we thought about our audience, expectations, and product direction.

01
Our primary user wasn't who we thought
We built for service businesses, but store owners were equally interested and among the earliest adopters. This was a pivotal finding that led us to iterate and sharpen our marketing messaging to reflect a broader, more diverse audience.
02
There was a gap between expectation and reality
Talking to users, we learned they expected 50, 100, or even 200 leads per month. Actual volumes were much lower. Closing this expectations gap became a core challenge in design, onboarding, and how we communicated value.
03
Small business owners act on simplicity
The features that got used most had one clear action. Complexity killed engagement. Every AI suggestion needed an immediate way to act on it, and every screen needed one obvious next step.
What's Next

Future iterations

Four directions that extend both surfaces further into AI-driven automation and conversion intelligence.

✍️
AI Writing
Full AI Email Drafting
Move from suggested responses to full reply generation: the AI drafts the entire email from the lead context. User reviews, edits, and sends in seconds.
🔁
Automation
Automated Follow-up Sequences
Schedule reminders and follow-up nudges without any manual input. Set a sequence once; the CRM handles the timing, personalisation, and delivery.
📊
Benchmarking
Cross-Business Benchmarks
Show users how their lead conversion compares to similar businesses in the same category. Turn platform data into personalised, actionable benchmarks.
📅
Integration
CRM x Booking in One Tap
Convert a high-scoring lead directly into a calendar appointment without leaving the CRM. One surface, one action, zero context switching.
Reflection

What this project taught me

💡

The hardest design problem is not the UI; it is knowing which information to surface and when. Lead scoring and smart suggestions only feel useful when the timing is right. Showing the right thing five minutes too late feels as bad as not showing it at all.

🤝

Smart features need to be humble. Suggestions, not commands. Confidence with an escape hatch. Every recommendation in the CRM was designed to feel like a smart colleague, not an automation that decided things without you.

🔗

Two products designed as a system are always stronger than two designed in isolation. Smart Forms and Lead Management only reached their full potential when we stopped treating them as separate features and started thinking about the complete lead lifecycle.

From first form
to loyal customer

Currently open to senior product design roles focused on AI, personalisation, and complex system design.

Business Workspace Smart Forms × Lead Management Product Management Apex
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