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Forms and questionnaires

Forms collect information before a client is in your workflow. Questionnaires collect answers from a known project or booking contact later. Audience signup forms add people to a list for future marketing.

Go to Settings -> Forms to manage all three.

Choose the right submission mode

When you create a public form, choose what a submission should do.

Inquiry / Project Intake

Use this mode for contact pages, quote requests, and session inquiries. A submission creates or updates the contact and creates a project.

Every inquiry project needs a service. You can either:

  • Choose one service in the form settings.
  • Add a mapped Service Type field so the person submitting chooses the service.

When the form uses one fixed service, you can also assign a package. Use a clear source or campaign label when you want to compare where inquiries came from later.

Audience Signup

Use this mode for newsletters, launch announcements, and mini-session interest lists. A submission creates or updates the contact and adds them to the selected audience list. It does not create a project.

Only active audience lists can accept public signups. You can add an explicit marketing opt-in checkbox. Joining the list records the person’s interest; checking the opt-in records permission to receive marketing email. Keep that distinction clear when writing the form.

Questionnaire

Questionnaires are templates sent to a specific project or booking contact. They collect answers without creating another project or joining an audience.

Use them for timelines, locations, family names, wardrobe preferences, vendor details, or other information you need after someone has booked.

Build the form

Open a form or questionnaire to enter the builder. Draft changes save while you work.

Add content blocks to explain the form:

  • Heading.
  • Text with basic formatting.
  • Image with an optional caption.
  • Image & Text for a side-by-side section.

Add fields to collect answers:

  • Contact Fields and Project Fields save answers to the matching details when that submission mode supports them.
  • Text Field creates a short or long custom answer.
  • Dropdown offers a list of options.
  • Choices offers single or multiple text or image choices.

Select any block to edit its label, supporting text, options, and required setting. Drag blocks to reorder them. Required fields are enforced only when they are visible to the person completing the form.

Arrange fields and add logic

Use Layout to group fields in a vertical stack or a two-column row. Ungrouped fields still appear normally; empty groups do not appear on the public form.

Use Logic to show or hide blocks based on earlier answers. Hidden fields are not treated as required and their values are not included in the submission. Preview each path so clients never reach a visible question without the context needed to answer it.

Configure the public experience

Open Settings in the builder to manage:

  • The internal name used in LYGHTBOX.
  • The submission mode and its service, package, audience, or opt-in settings.
  • The public title, description, and submit-button label.
  • The message shown after a successful submission, or a page to redirect to.
  • Appearance choices for the public form.

Complete the required settings, then select Publish. Later edits remain a draft until you select Publish Changes, so the shared form continues to use its last published version. Use Discard Draft if you want to return to that version.

Questionnaires are sent to known clients instead of shared as general public forms.

Share or embed a form

After a public form has been published, open Share to:

  • View the published form.
  • Copy its public link.
  • Copy the embed snippet for your website.

The embed keeps the form on your site while LYGHTBOX handles the form experience. Test the embedded version on both a narrow phone layout and a full desktop page before publishing your website changes.

Send and review questionnaires

Send a questionnaire from a project or from a mini-session booking’s details. The client receives a secure link for that request.

The request shows whether it is waiting for a response or completed. Once submitted, review the answers from the same project or booking. If you edit the questionnaire template later, the request already sent to a client keeps the content associated with that request.

Manage audience lists

The Audience Lists section contains the lists used by audience-signup forms and campaigns. Use one list for one recognizable interest, such as “Newsletter,” “Fall Mini Sessions,” or “Brand Photography Updates.”

Audience lists are different from tags. A list represents a signup or campaign audience and keeps its membership history. A tag is an internal label you apply to a contact for organization.

Before publishing

Complete one realistic test submission and confirm the result:

  1. Check that contact details land in the expected fields.
  2. For inquiry forms, confirm the project uses the intended service and package.
  3. For audience signups, confirm the audience and opt-in wording are clear.
  4. Test each conditional path and every required field.
  5. Confirm the success message or redirect gives the person a useful next step.