How lead-widget enquiries become self-scope invites
Your Surfacely lead widget is the enquiry form you can embed on your own website. When a homeowner fills it in, two things happen at once: a new lead appears in your pipeline, and the homeowner receives a self-scope invite by email. No buttons to press, no manual chasing.
This article covers what that automation does, what the homeowner experiences, and what you can do to help it land well.
The flow, end to end
- A homeowner finds your website and clicks through to the lead widget
- They fill in their details — name, email, mobile, address, what they want painted, when, and a few photos if they have them
- The widget creates a project in your Surfacely pipeline with status Lead
- You get a notification email about the new lead
- The homeowner gets a separate email — a self-scope invite, branded with your business name, logo, and colours
- They tap the invite and start the walk-through. Most finish in 5–10 minutes
- You see the completed self-scope on the project — photos, surfaces, measurements, and notes ready to review and import
By the time you sit down to look at the lead properly, much of the legwork is done.
What the homeowner's email looks like
The invite is short and friendly. It explains in plain language that the painter would love a quick walk-through of the place before they visit — photos of the spaces they want painted and anything worth knowing — and that they'll review it and come back with an estimate. There's one big button: Start the walkthrough. No app, no account.
The email uses your business name as the sender, your logo at the top, and your brand colour on the button. To the homeowner, it looks like part of the same experience as your website — not a third-party email from a tool they've never heard of.
When the invite doesn't go out automatically
The automatic send only triggers when the widget captured a homeowner email address. If your widget collected a mobile but no email, the lead still appears in your pipeline — it just doesn't get the invite on its own. That's not a dead end: you can send a self-scope invite by hand to any homeowner from the Clients page or the project hub (look for Send an invite / the Grow your pipeline card). Enter their email, send the link, and it works exactly the same from there.
Status tracking on the lead
The project card on your Projects page shows a badge once the homeowner has engaged with the walk-through:
- Walkthrough started — they've opened the link and begun answering but haven't sent it yet
- Walkthrough complete — submission ready for your review, with their timing visible on the card
A lead with no badge at all means the homeowner hasn't tapped the invite yet. Most who start a self-scope finish it. If a fresh lead sits without engagement for a couple of days, a short follow-up phone call usually moves things along — and that call is far easier when you can say "I sent you a quick walk-through link, did it land in your spam folder?"
What you can do to help it land well
- Set up your branding first. Logo, brand colour, business name — all of these end up in the invite email. See Company profile and branding.
- Make sure your widget asks for an email. Without one, the automation can't run.
- Be ready to turn it around. The homeowner has been told you'll review their walk-through and come back with an estimate. A prompt, considered response while the enquiry is fresh is what converts a self-scope into a booked job.
- Don't follow up too aggressively. A homeowner getting a self-scope invite plus a "did you fill it in yet?" call ten minutes later is having a different experience than the one self-scope is designed for. Give it a day or two.
Phone leads and email-less leads
The widget is the automatic path, but it isn't the only one. If a lead comes in over the phone, or through the widget without an email address, you can still start a self-scope yourself — open the client on the Clients page or the project hub, tap Send an invite, enter their email, and off it goes. The widget just makes it hands-free: the more enquiries you route through it, the more leads pre-scope themselves without you lifting a finger.
Why it matters — for painters: most painters lose more time to bad-fit leads than to anything else — chasing enquiries that go quiet, or driving an hour to a job the homeowner has already given to someone else. Auto-inviting leads to self-scope filters that out without you having to do anything. The homeowners who really want the work engage and send detail. The ones who were just kicking tyres tend not to. By the time you're picking up the phone, you're talking to the people who are serious — and you already know what their job involves.
Why it matters — for homeowners: the old way of getting a paint job priced means phone tag, then scheduling a stranger to visit just to cover the basics, then waiting again for the written number. Self-scope flips the order. You share the job once, from your couch, in five minutes — and the painter comes back to you having already seen it. The site visit, when it happens, is a focused confirmation rather than a cold start, and you've committed nothing more than a few photos to get there.