Surprisingly, many ecommerce sites waste the thank you or receipt page by making it a dead end. Instead of encouraging your visitors to close the window, continue to engage your customers with one of the following tactics:

1.   Refer a friend form: After the user completes the purchase, ask them if they would be willing to tell a friend or family member about your product or service. Obviously, if they trusted you enough to give you their own money, they might be willing to recommend you to a friend.

2.   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 how to login, and find out when the order has shipped and what the current status is on the delivery.

3.   Show products related to those ordered: 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 orders.

4.   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.

5.   Coupon for Next Purchase: Encourage customers to bounce right back with a coupon for their next purchase. Make it clear, however, that this discount cannot be used on previous purchases.

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 ideas. 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.

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

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