June 10, 2026
Most agency websites have a quote form. Almost none of them have a useful one.
The typical setup collects four things: name, email, phone, and "what do you need?" Then someone at the agency calls the prospect, has the real conversation, and types the answers into a Word doc or a notes field. The website form did not collect intake. It collected a homework assignment.
Here is what we hear on calls with agencies, almost word for word: the web form generates a PDF, and the PDF gets copied and pasted into different systems. One producer called it a disaster. He was being polite.
This guide covers what a good intake form looks like, the build options, and how to embed one on your site without an IT project.
What a website intake form should actually collect
The test for every question: does a carrier ask for this? If yes, collect it. If no, cut it.
For personal lines, that means:
- Who: name, date of birth, contact info, current address (and prior address if they moved recently)
- Home: year built, square footage, roof age, how it's heated, any updates
- Auto: drivers and dates of birth, vehicles (year, make, model, or just the VIN), current carrier and how long they've been with them
- History: claims in the last 5 years, current coverage limits if they know them
That looks like a long list. It is maybe 3 minutes on a phone, and most clients answer all of it happily when the questions come in small steps with plain wording. "When was your roof last replaced?" works. "Roof installation year (required)" reads like a DMV form.
The three ways to get a form on your site
1. Generic form builders
JotForm, Cognito Forms, Google Forms. Agencies use these because they are cheap and familiar.
The problem is not the form. It's what happens after. Generic builders hand you a PDF or a spreadsheet row, and now someone re-types it into the AMS, the rater, and wherever else it needs to live. You moved the typing from the client's kitchen table to your CSR's desk. The work didn't go away. It changed chairs.
Generic forms are also static. Every client sees every question, including the auto questions when they asked about a home policy. Clients quit forms that ask things that obviously don't apply to them.
2. Custom-built forms
A developer builds exactly what you want, wired into your systems. This works if you have a developer. Most agencies don't, and the form breaks the first time anything around it changes. We've talked to agencies paying maintenance retainers for a contact form. Don't be that agency.
3. Purpose-built insurance intake forms
This is the category Relay's Intake Forms tool lives in: forms that already know what an insurance intake needs to collect, branded as your agency, embedded on your site with a copy-paste snippet.
The difference is the output. A purpose-built form doesn't produce a PDF. It produces structured data: fields with names, mapped to what carriers ask, landing in a pipeline as a new lead. If a dec page gets uploaded with it, document parsing reads that too. Nobody re-types anything.
How embedding actually works
If you can paste a YouTube video into your website, you can embed an intake form. The mechanics, in Relay's case:
- Build the form once: pick the lines of business it covers, set your agency name and colors.
- Copy the embed snippet (one block of HTML).
- Paste it into your website wherever the form should appear. Works with WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, or a hand-built site.
- Submissions land in your pipeline with the data already structured. Your team gets notified.
No iframe scavenger hunt, no developer, no Zapier chain to babysit. If you'd rather not touch your website at all, the same form lives at a hosted link you can text or email.
What changes when the form is good
Agencies that fix intake see three things move:
- Fewer second phone calls. The first conversation starts with the data already in hand, so it's about coverage, not spelling the street name.
- Faster quote turnaround. Intake that arrives structured is quotable the same day. Intake that arrives as a voicemail is quotable whenever someone gets to it.
- The website starts earning its keep. A form that works at 9pm captures the prospect who was comparison shopping after dinner. Your competitors' four-field forms are asking that prospect to wait for a callback.
Key Takeaways
- A website form that collects four fields isn't intake. It's an invitation to play phone tag.
- The output format matters more than the form. PDFs and spreadsheet rows still get re-typed; structured data doesn't.
- Break long applications into short steps with plain-language questions. Clients finish forms that respect their time.
- Embedding is a copy-paste job with purpose-built tools. No developer required.
- Relay's Intake Forms feed submissions straight into the same pipeline that runs quoting, so the data gets typed exactly once: by the client.
Want intake that lands quote-ready instead of as a PDF? See how Intake Forms work on a 15-minute call.