How to use thank you pages for better goal tracking and customer experience

You wouldn't receive a gift from someone and not say "Thank You," right? Of course not. When a person takes the time to click through and take the action you recommended, it's more than a gift to you - it's a lead and a potential customer.

On the web, we say "thanks" via a thank you page that sets the tone for the customer experience.

A thank you page, sometimes called a success page, is the page that loads after a user completes a conversion activity on your website. Submitting a lead generation form, purchasing a product or subscribing to your newsletter, are all potential conversion activities.

It serves as a clear way to let people know the action they took was successful and acknowledges your care for them extends beyond the conversion.

Why Use Thank You Pages?

Because the thing you want even more than a conversion is a customer.

Thank you pages are a great way to show that you care, nurture a new lead and build some trust. They also have some benefits for improving your goal tracking and understanding your customer's journey.

Thank You Pages Provide:

• More opportunity to encourage secondary conversions and sharing of your content.
• A better starting point from which to engage and nurture new prospects and/or customers.
• Better tracking and integration with Google Analytics.

From a strictly friendly, relationship-building perspective, a thank you page is courteous and provides a chance to start a second conversion process.

That could be another product, an inquiry, or additional content. That, in turn, can help paint a clearer picture of who the prospect is and how you can serve them better.

From a goal tracking perspective, having a unique thank you page URL for each goal gives you the ability to easily and accurately track each goal activity on your site separately. It also allows you to assign more specific and accurate marketing values to each conversion activity you track.

Set Up a Thank You Page In 4 Steps

Step One

Make sure each of your sites goals/forms redirects to its own unique thank you page URL. Create a thank you page template for your website, so you can quickly generate new TY pages when you need them.

Step Two

Set up a Google Tag Manager (GTM) Trigger so you later establish tracking in Google Analytics and any other platforms such as Google Ads or DV360.

Google Ads will actually use the goal that you've set up and optimize your campaign around it.

If you're running paid search or display campaigns, you can also use these thank you page URLs to enhance your Remarketing Campaign Lists.

Step Three

Thank You page URL naming conventions.?Start the URLs with a TY page naming system like?/thank-you-/?and then continue the slug with a goal-specific name like?/…for-subscribing/?or?/…contact-form/

• The complete slug might look like this:?/thank-you-newsletter-signup/?or?/thank-you-white-paper-download/?or?/thank-you-contact-request/?or?/thank-you-demo-schedule/?or?/thank-you-mortgage-loan-submission/
• Always start your TY page slug with "/thank-you-"
• A consistent naming system helps set up more precise and individualized tracking in Google Analytics and makes it easy to filter and locate these specialized pages on your site and in your analytics

Step Four

Use?the simple?Thank You Page?Best?Practices?listed below to optimize your TY pages to better serve your customers, build trust and encourage the desired next steps.

Thank You Page Best Practices

Remember that the thank you page is a great place to help?set the user's expectations?by letting them know what the next step is. Also…

• Restate the core value proposition, confirming the action they just took
• Let the user know?WHEN, HOW & WHO?will be following up with them (if applicable)
• Let the user know how they can track their inquiry (if applicable)
• Link to where they can find more information about the specific product they just purchased or applied for
• It is also a great time and place to request a secondary conversion such as "Newsletter Sign Up" or "Refer a Friend."

A proper thank you (page) can do much more than help track conversions. It can?build immediate confidence?and?boost customer trust.