Your Thank You page is not a dead end

Surprisingly, many online shop owners waste the "Thank You" or receipt page by making it a dead end. Instead of encouraging your buyers to close the window, continue to engage them with one of the following suggestions:

• How to Track your Order: In order to prevent needless queries to your customer service department, you might consider showing customers the process for tracking their order. Show them where to find the information, and find out when the order has shipped and what the current status is on the delivery.
• Show more products related to those ordered (i.e supplies):  By doing this, you might be surprised at how many people will immediately order again. Just be sure that your customer service team is prepared to deal with customer requesting to add additional items to their order.
• Feedback Survey: Ask your shoppers about the experience they just had. Because the experience is fresh on their mind, they will tell you about any frustrations while using your site. You can use a Google form for this.
• Coupon for Next Purchase: Encourage customers to bounce right back with a voucher code for their next purchase. Make it clear, that the discount cannot be used on the previous order they just placed.
• Inlcude a sign-up form for your newsletter and announcements, this will continually help you drive more sales to your website through alternate marketing tactics.

In choosing one of the above tactics, your company priorities will apply. For example, if you’re most concerned about providing preemptive customer service, then you might be inclined to use the receipt page to clarify how to track the order. If you’re more concerned about driving sales, you might choose to show related products.

A word of caution applies to these suggestions... Before you encourage your customer to perform another action, make it very clear that the purchase process is complete, and order has been submitted. In addition, always send an email confirmation receipt (ShopFactory does this automatically for you).

By using one of the above tactics, hopefully you’ll steer clear of the mistake many ecommerce sites make on their "Thank You" page and continue to build a long lasting, profitable relationship with your customers.