Case Study: Lead Generation & CRM

From
Visitor
to Customer

A two-part AI system that helps small business owners capture better leads with intelligent forms, then manage, score, and convert those leads with a CRM co-pilot that does the thinking for them.

Role
Lead Product Designer
Product
Jimdo
Scope
Smart Forms + Vision CRM
Year
2023–2024
Scroll to explore
80%
Of paying users are service businesses
60–80k
Daily active users across the platform
15.8%
Detractor adoption — 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
01
Side Hustler
Marketer Mike
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
02
Business Owner
Owner Olivia
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.
01
Act One
Smart Forms
How do you help a yoga teacher or consultant create a form that captures genuinely useful lead information, without them needing to know what to ask?
Solution Design

Building forms that ask the right questions

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, not just a 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
Hi-Fidelity Design

The form creation flow

Four screens showing the complete journey, from choosing a form type to a live, published registration form.

Step 01
Choose your starting point
Choose between an AI-generated form tailored to your business, or start from a template for a faster build.
Step 02
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 03
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 04
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
02
Act Two
Vision CRM
Capturing a lead is only half the job. What does the user do with enquiries once they arrive? This is where we extended the product into an AI-powered CRM layer.
The Insight

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

The Vision CRM builds on the leads Smart Forms captures. Every submission flows into a dashboard where the platform does the analysis, scoring leads, surfacing actions, and generating suggested replies, so the owner can focus on doing the work, not managing the pipeline.

The CRM Loop
Form Submitted
Lead data flows into the CRM automatically
AI Scores the Lead
High / Moderate / Low, based on enquiry signals
Action Surfaced
Co-pilot suggests the right next step
Lead Converted
One-tap reply, booking, or follow-up
Predictive Intelligence

Not all leads are equal. The AI knows the difference

Each enquiry is automatically scored High, Moderate, or Low based on submission content, service interest, and engagement signals. Users see at a glance who to prioritise, no manual triage needed.

✦
Co-Pilot Suggestion
"Olivia seems to have a high lead score. She sent an enquiry 2 days ago. Follow up now while the interest is fresh."
Follow up with Olivia →
AI Recommendations

The right action, at the right moment

The co-pilot surfaces contextual recommendations directly in the dashboard. No inbox digging. No manual triage. The product does the thinking.

📈
Upsell Opportunity
"80% of your customers are requesting 1:1 coaching. Upsell your 1:1 service with an upgraded quote for higher-value leads."
Review quote for 1:1 coaching →
👋
Engage with Leads
"Send thank you emails to customers who submit a form. Businesses that respond within 24 hours see significantly higher conversion."
Send thank you emails →
💬
Save Favourite Replies
"Respond faster by saving the messages you send most often. Your top responses are ready to reuse."
Manage saved replies →
Customer Leads CRM Dashboard
Adoption & Impact

Adopted by the users we needed most

Smart Forms launched to Jimdo's 60–80k 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 Vision CRM 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 × CRM Apex
Get in touch →
← Business Workspace Apex Lift →