Thank you pages are often an afterthought left to developers to put together but don’t under estimate their influence over a site visitor. The site visitor that has reached the thank you page stage has already interacted with your site and it can be assumed is positive towards your product offering or company – now is the time to take advantage of this positive attitude. The following are the basic requirements for all thank you pages – and some examples of how to use them effectively.

Hidden talents of thank you pages:

1) Reassurance to your user Most visitors expect to see a confirmation page/thank you page to let them know everything went through correctly. On most occasions a visitors will have handed over valuable personal information to your website, this process can be a little cold so it always good to reassure a visitor that you respect their data and what purposes will it be used for. This also adds credibility to your site and helps to build the relationship with your visitor/customer.

2) Tracking the success of your site Thank you pages can be the easiest and most simplistic was to gauge the success of your site. By just having a goal set up in Google analytics to record visits to the thank you page url you can see at a glance the conversion rates from all your traffic sources i.e. organic search engine results, cost-per-click results, email marketing etc. Analysing this valuable resource can help improve overall conversion rates and also determine what channels to invest in for future growth.

3) Encouragement throughout your site – opportunity to introduce new products Lastly thank you pages are traditionally high exit pages as they are the end of the line so to speak, but what can be done stem the haemorrhage of visitors leaving your site at this stage. It’s very simple just give them another action to perform, they’ve already proved that they are open to your company so they could also be interested in your new line of products or signing up for your newsletter, or being introduced to the team. A simple call-to-action on the thank-you page can change the architecture form being primarily linear to a more cyclical nature. Never assume a visitor capable of thinking for themselves – always provide the answer before the question has been asked.

Thank you pages are in integral part to any website, please don’t ignore them. This post deals with some of the most basic elements, there are numerous examples of sites that use thank you pages to their full potential using advanced technology to deliver dynamic thank you pages based on products purchased or viewed.