How to make a quote form that gets you all the details the first time
A quote form works when every required field is a piece of data that changes the price — for a move, that's six — and a submission can't go out half-finished, so you quote it right the first time, no second round.
Marcela runs a small moving company in Ensenada: one truck, two guys, and her on the phone. On Tuesday at nine at night, someone writes to her: “Hi, how much do you charge for a move?” Marcela answers the same as always: from where to where?
The answer arrives Wednesday at noon: “From Sauzal to downtown.” What floor? Thursday: “Third floor, no elevator.” By Friday, when she finally has what she needs to give a number, the answer has changed: “Thanks, I already found someone.”
That quote wasn’t lost because it was too expensive. It was lost before it ever existed — Marcela never got the chance to say her price. A quote form exists for exactly this: so the conversation starts where Marcela’s died, with every detail already in hand.
What is a quote form?
A quote form is a page with the questions you need answered to price a job, where the customer answers them all at once. It’s not a contact form — that one takes whatever comes in, from a compliment to a complaint. This one collects data, and every question is there on purpose.
And “the first time” doesn’t mean the customer answers fast. It means that when you open their request, it’s already complete, and the only thing missing from the deal is your number.
Why doesn’t WhatsApp get you the details the first time?
Because in a chat you can ask, but you can’t require. Each question travels alone, each answer arrives whenever the customer gets around to it, and the quote gets assembled in installments over two or three days — while the customer is asking two other places that did answer with a number.
Publishing your list of requirements helps, and for some businesses it’s one of the best things your page can have: “to quote you we need the measurements, the quantity, and the date.” But a published list is a request. It can be read, and it can be skipped — the message still lands the same way: “Hi, how much does it cost?”
A required field is something else entirely. It’s not a question asked more loudly — it’s a gate. The form won’t let an incomplete submission through — a half-filled request doesn’t exist, not in your inbox, not anywhere. That’s the whole difference between asking for the details and actually having them.
What questions should yours ask?
Required: only the ones that change the price. Optional: the ones that change your response but not the number. And out: everything else.
For a move, six pieces of data move the price: where from, where to, what floor on each end, whether there’s an elevator, what’s being moved, and by what date. With those six, Marcela can quote without asking a single question. Miss one and she can’t — that’s why they’re required. How did they hear about her, do they prefer morning or afternoon, any notes? Those shape the response, not the price: optional, or out.
And here’s the warning almost nobody gives: the form’s worst enemy is the form. Nobody fills out one with twelve questions — the person moving will just send you a message instead, and you’re back to asking one question at a time. Every field that doesn’t change the price charges the customer a minute of patience for nothing but your own curiosity. If you’re not sure a field belongs, that doubt is already the answer.
How do you build one on your page?
You describe it. On a page built with Proyecta, the quote request form already comes built in: five questions, four required — name, phone, which service you’re interested in, and what you need — plus an optional email. For a lot of businesses, that’s enough to get started today.
But you can ask for yours custom-fit, describing it the same way you described the page:
“I want a quote form for moves that asks where from and where to, the floor on each end, whether there’s an elevator, what’s being moved, the date, and lets them upload photos of the big furniture.”
Each question comes out in its correct form. “Is there an elevator?” gets answered with a click — not a text box where someone writes “I think so” — the date gets its own calendar, and the photo comes as a file: the customer uploads it from their phone, and the submission won’t go through until the photo finishes uploading. For Marcela, that photo is worth more than three questions, because “what’s being moved?” is the one that gets answered worst in chat: “well, the usual stuff from a house.” A living room shows better than it describes.
And if your page already showcases your services, each one’s “Get a Quote” button can open the request with the service already filled in — don’t ask the customer something your page already knows.
Where do the requests land?
On a board, not in a chat. Every request is a card with everything inside it — the six details, the photos — in columns you name: to quote, quoted, accepted. You get an email notification for each one, and the customer isn’t left hanging: their confirmation promises them what comes next — you, reaching out with the price.
And the card doesn’t move on its own. On your WhatsApp, whatever’s on top is the most recent; on the board, the first column is everything you haven’t quoted yet. Monday’s request is still sitting there on Thursday, staring at you, until you move it yourself.
What the form doesn’t solve for you
The price. Nothing in the form calculates or promises a number: the confirmation the customer sees just says that you’ll be reaching out with the price, and that promise gets kept by you, or it doesn’t. Quoting is still your job — you just start it now with all the details already in hand.
Nor does it replace seeing the job, when seeing the job is the quote. The car that “makes a weird noise” and the kitchen that needs a tape measure get quoted in person; there, the form’s job is to make the visit worthwhile, not to skip it. A normal move, with six details and two photos, really can be quoted from a distance. An engine noise can’t.
And it asks everyone the same thing: there’s no “if they say commercial space, ask something different.” If half your jobs need a different list of questions, that’s not a form with a quirk — that’s two forms. The fields, by the way, don’t get edited from your dashboard — you change them the same way you built the page, by describing the change.
Start with the two dates
Pull up the last quote you actually sent. Look for two dates: the day they first wrote to you, and the day you sent your number. Nobody paid you for the days in between — you paid for them, question by question, and that’s exactly the time your customer spent still looking elsewhere.
A form doesn’t make you cheaper or more expensive. It makes you the first to answer with a complete number. Describe yours in Proyecta — the six questions your trade needs, the photo if it helps — and publish it on your page. Next time someone writes to you at nine at night, the details will arrive on their own: proyecta.dev.