What Does A Great Thank You Page Look Like?

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August 16, 2006

Thank you pages serve a number of goals:

  • They let the customer know that he successfully completed the transaction
  • They may give the customer critical information (“Thank you for subscribing. Check your email to get your subscription link.”)
  • They may be printed by the customer as a receipt
  • They are an easy way to tell your web analytics that a conversion took place.

Besides serving all these goals, thank you pages provide a special opportunity that many sites, especially e-commerce sites, do not take advantage of. Most of us know by now that it is very important not to stop the customer when she is trying to spend money, and that’s why we don’t have mandatory registrations or surveys before the shopping cart. The thank you page is the perfect place for those things:

1) Surveys. Some e-commerce sites already have professional surveys, like BizRate. (Read what I wrote about invasive surveys.) Most do not have any surveys (because if they did, I’d be taking surveys every other day.) I pleaded with an e-commerce customer to put a survey on his website, and while we agonized about the wording and she dragged her feet for months, she ultimately did put the survey up. She has been awed at the kind of actionable information customer have been giving her on her survey (especially because she included a large freeform box for customers to make any comments that they like.)

2) Registration. Like a good etailer, you let them purchase as a guest. Why not ask for the registration now, on the thank you page? You’ve already got all the information you need except a password and username (and you might even make the email address into a username if that’s how your site works.)

3) Other opportunities. The thank you page is the perfect place to ask customers if they would like to be a member of a virtual focus group. Virtual focus groups give you a small mailing list that you can ask questions of — about the site, about your service, about new products. Most people don’t compensate the group but may do an annul coupon or other thank you gift. An even better way to recruit members for this group is to ask everyone who emails a complaint or a compliment to join — those people are already engaged with your company at a high emotional level.

4) And my favorite: The thank you page that gives you a chance to go back to the site and buy some more.

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics