When a potential customer fills out a contact form on your website, it’s an exciting moment for your business. Because we want to make sure you never miss a single lead, we want to share some important information about how website forms work—especially if you host your website with us here at Orlando Web Wizard but use a separate, third-party system (like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or GoDaddy) for your business emails.
Here is a simple look behind the curtain at how your website handles leads, why email isn’t always 100% reliable, and how you can take control of your data.
The “Same Name” Email Puzzle
You might wonder why a website form would ever fail to reach your inbox. It usually comes down to a technical quirk regarding your domain name.
Because your website is named yourcompany.com and your email is also @yourcompany.com, your website’s server sometimes gets “confused” when trying to send a notification to you. It looks for your email inbox right there on the website server, rather than looking out on the internet where your third-party email provider actually lives.
To solve this, we use the industry-leading tool Gravity Forms paired with a specialized plugin called GravitySMTP. Through this setup, we connect a secure, third-party email address behind the scenes to safely route the form notifications away from the website server and forward them directly to your actual inbox.
Why We Don’t Know If You’ve Received a Lead
Because you use a third-party email system, we do not have access to your inbox or your email settings.
Think of it like the postal service: our server drops the letter (your form notification) into the mailbox, but we can’t see inside your house to know if you actually opened it. Because email servers across the internet constantly update their spam filters and security rules, emails can occasionally be delayed, blocked, or sent to a junk folder without anyone realizing it.
The Golden Rule of Web Leads: Because of the general unreliability of email routing across any server on the internet, you should never solely rely on email notifications to run your business.
Your Safety Net: The WordPress Dashboard
The good news is that even if an email gets lost in cyberspace, your website securely saves every single form submission.
It is your responsibility to be diligent about checking your website backend regularly. Here is how you can make sure you never miss a lead:
1. Check Your Entries Regularly
Log into your WordPress dashboard at least once a day. On the left-hand menu, you will see a section for Forms > Entries. Here, you will find a clean, uneditable log of every person who has filled out a form on your site, complete with dates, names, and messages.
2. Download Your Weekly Callback List
Want to streamline your follow-ups? You can easily export all of your form entries directly from WordPress as an Excel spreadsheet. Many of our clients do this every Friday to create a master “callback list” for the week, ensuring no potential client slips through the cracks.
Partnering Together for Your Success
We do our absolute best to build robust, secure websites and implement tools like GravitySMTP to give your emails the best possible chance of arriving safely. However, technology requires a team effort.
Please take a moment to make checking your WordPress dashboard a part of your regular business routine. If you ever notice your email notifications suddenly stop arriving, please notify us immediately. Once you alert us to a glitch, we can step in, test the system, and get things back on track.
Have questions about logging in or downloading your Excel lead sheets? Reach out to us anytime—we are always here to help you work smarter!
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