How it works
Restaurants take table bookings through their sites this way, bakers take cookie orders, clinics take appointment requests, gyms book free trials. It takes three steps, and you only do the first. (How the form itself works, spam filtering included, is in Contact forms & submissions.)
You ask
Say which form you need and what it should ask. Ullbek builds it into your site, styled to match.
A customer sends a request
On their phone or laptop, they fill it in and press the button. They see your thank-you straight away.
You reply
The request arrives in your inbox within seconds. Press Reply and your answer goes straight to the customer.
A booking or order form sends you a request. You confirm it, by replying, in your own words. Nothing is charged on the site and no calendar fills itself in, so you stay in charge of every table, batch and appointment. Already use a booking app or an online shop? Ask for a button that links to it: Meta pixel, chat & booking shows how.
What to ask for
Open your site and describe the form the way you'd explain it to a new member of staff: what it's for, what you need to know, and what the customer should see after they send it. Copy any of these and change the details to yours.
Table bookings
Parties and celebrations are where a form beats the phone: a customer planning a fiftieth birthday for twelve can tell you everything at once, at midnight if they like.
Orders for collection
Product enquiries
Course and class sign-ups
Appointment requests
Free trial bookings
The customer's email is what makes Reply work: your answer goes to the address they typed. A form without one still reaches you, but you'll have to copy their phone number or address out of the message to get back to them.
What your customer sees
Your form, in your site's colours and fonts, with the fields you asked for. Dates and times can open the phone's own pickers, choices appear as buttons or a list, and the button says what it does ("Request a table", not "Submit"). After they press it, the form is replaced by your thank-you message, so they know it went through.
To see it as they will, open your published site on your own phone and go through it once. If anything is awkward, say so: "the guest number box is too small on phones", "make the date the first question". Spam is filtered out before anything reaches you, so the requests you get are from people.
Where the request lands
In your inbox, as an email titled New message via "Your site's name". Inside are the customer's answers, field by field, and the page they sent it from. There's no new app to check: the request is in the inbox you already read on your phone, next to everything else.
Each email also keeps count. The first one says Your website just brought you its first customer message; after that it tells you which one this is (your fifth, your twelfth) and since when. Your own test messages aren't counted.
Choosing which inbox
Requests go to the email you sign in with until you choose another. If you run the business from a different address, a shared bookings inbox or your shop's email, just tell your site's assistant:
The assistant emails a six-digit code to that address. Paste the code back into the chat and it's done: every request from then on lands there. You can also change it under Manage → Form. All the forms on one site go to the same address. The details, including the notice your sign-in email gets when the address changes, are in Contact forms & submissions.
Send yourself a test
Before you share the link, send one request yourself from the live site, with your own email in the form, and check it arrives and that Reply goes back to you. Requests sent from the builder's preview arrive too, marked [Test] in the subject, so you can try the form while you're still working on it.
Most requests come from phones. Ask for the button near the top of every page ("put a Book a table button in the header on every page"), keep the form short, and say when you'll reply. A customer who knows they'll hear back today is happy to wait.
Common questions
Can customers pay through the form?
No. The form takes the request; you take payment the way you already do: at the counter, by bank transfer, or with a payment link you send in your reply. If you sell through an online shop or a booking app, ask for a button that links to it.
Does it work on a free site?
Yes. Forms work on every published site, on the free address and on your own domain.
Where can I see all my requests?
In your inbox. Search for your site's name to see every request it has sent you, or set up a label or folder for them in your email app.
Can I have more than one form?
Yes: a booking form on one page, a party enquiry on another, a newsletter sign-up in the footer. Each email shows which page it came from, and they all go to the same address.
Can I change the questions later?
Any time. Say what to add, remove or reword ("add a high chair question to the booking form") and publish. Requests already in your inbox stay as they are.
Can I pause requests while I'm closed?
Yes. Turn submissions off under Manage → Form while you're away; the form stays on the page and visitors see that requests are paused. You can also ask for a line above the form, like "We're closed 24–27 December, requests will be answered on the 28th".
Ready for your first request?
Open your site, paste the prompt for your business, and publish. Then send yourself a test.