Your “Thank You” page should not end the customer experience on your site.

MoreVisibility - June 23, 2008

There’s a joke in the Web Analytics community: “Your “Thank You” page should be your highest exited page” (which means that the highest percentage of people that leave your website are leaving at your “Thank You” page – which of course means that those people have all contacted you, requested more information, or probably bought something from your site).

I disagree. In fact, I think that it doesn’t matter what page your visitors leave your website from. For all you WWE wrestling fans out there, you will remember that some years ago, The Rock used to ask someone for their name, only to interrupt the person mid-answer with “It doesn’t matter what your name is!”, to a roaring ovation from the crowd. That’s how I feel about exit pages – “It doesn’t matter what page you leave from!”.

People have to leave your website eventually – it’s just a fact of life

Death, Taxes, and Website Exits – they all occur eventually. Visitors to your website can’t stay on your site forever, as much as we’d like for them to, they eventually have to go to work, to sleep, or walk the dog. However, quite a number of folks exert a tremendously unnecessary amount of energy into finite studies of their top exit pages, only to wind up right back where they originally started their analysis. Save yourself the trouble and anguish and understand that people, no matter how good your website is, will need to log-off at some point, unless they are attempting to set a Guinness Book of World Records feat by having the longest uninterrupted internet user-session.

…but it doesn’t have to be the “Thank You” page of your website!

So, a visitor comes to your website, likes what he or she sees, and contacts your for more information or purchases an item from your store. Fantastic! However, don’t send them home quite yet. Don’t serve them up a cold, one-line “Thank you for your order” or “We’ll get back to you ASAP” type of message, that doesn’t include your website’s framework or anywhere else for them to go. As I’ve mentioned a few times already on our blog, get creative with your “Thank You” page. Add some more information for them, a PDF for them to download, or even additional items that they may be interested in purchasing at a later date. Keep them “hanging around”, much like a store owner would want customers to continue to hang around their shop, shooting the breeze, talking about products or related industry info – giving the appearance of a busy store to everyone else.

Definitely don’t have a page with one short sentence, or something that quickly re-directs back to the homepage appear. You just converted them – why treat them like yesterday’s news? Keep them “hanging around”, keep it friendly and informative, and you will probably win yourself some returning customers.