The Thank You Page: An Underutilized Powerhouse

By Andrea Cerny

Internet Marketing

Hooray, you got a lead!

A potential customer submitted your web form — that’s fantastic!

So…after they hit ‘Submit,’ what happens to them? What do they see? What do they do? Where do they go? Depending on your answers to these questions, you may have some work to do.

You may think displaying a confirmation message after a user submits your form is all you need to do, and, depending on your business, you may be right. However, redirecting a user to a dedicated thank you page after they submit a form is usually the best thing you can do for both the user and your business.

A well-crafted thank you page is an underutilized powerhouse in the internet marketing industry. Whether you’ve already got a thank you page in place or you’re starting from scratch, here’s everything you should consider including on your thank you page and what makes each element so beneficial.

Confirmation & Thank Yous

The first thing a user wants — and needs! — to see after they’ve submitted a form is confirmation that it was successfully submitted. Your thank you page should begin with some copy acknowledging receipt of the form.

In your copy, it’s also a nice idea to use your manners: thank them for their interest and the time they spent filling out your form; the latter is especially important if your form is on the longer side.

Products & Deliverables

In your page copy, it’s also important to inform your user when and how they can expect to receive any deliverables they signed up for or when a representative from your company will contact them to follow up. The more accurate you can be regarding the timing, the better.  If your web form is for a digital download, a download link should be above the fold and simple to identify.

Nurture Your Lead

Once you’ve thanked your lead, it’s smart to keep them engaged. Think about what you’d like them to do or see next and give them an easy way to do that. At this point, since they’ve already submitted a form, you don’t need to focus on the hard sell. Instead, provide easy ways for them to get to know you a little more and feel more confident in their decision to take action. Here are some ideas.

Invite your lead to:

• follow you on your social media channels
• check out or subscribe to your blog
• join your email list or sign up to receive your newsletter
• read or download a related resource
• learn more about your company and its history
• take advantage of a bonus offer or another related promotion
• explore your related products or services
• get a coupon or promo code for additional products or services
• share the offer with friends and family
• read testimonials or case studies

There are a lot of features to choose from, but as with any design, it’s important to not overwhelm your thank you page with too many options. Choose one to three of the elements above that are the most relevant to your business and your goals.

Conversion Tracking

Tracking your goals in Google Analytics is crucial to measuring your success. Behind the scenes, a thank you page is an integral part of this process. Having a thank you page makes it easy to set up destination goal tracking in Google Analytics. Essentially, you can measure your conversions by tracking how many times a user reaches the goal you’ve indicated. In this case, you can plug in the URL for your thank you page and track how many times a user gets there, which equals the number of conversions.