pagefly.ioUpon completing the checkout, customers tend to wait for an order confirmation, from which they check the total order value, the delivery information, tracking number and other similar types of information.
This makes thank you pages, also known as order the confirmation page – an important step of the checkout flow.
Though email is another way people confirm their order, a lack or poor implementation of the thank you pages can lead to bad post-purchase experience, which harms retention rate and potential marketing opportunities.
The situation is especially severe when the order confirmation emails end up in the customer’s spam box.
What’s next after finishing the payment?
Confirming an order is a must. But a well-implemented thank you page yields more than just a confirmation. By providing the right information, thank you pages are a good channel for stores to develop long-term relationships with their customers.
By utilizing the precious successful and happy moments, you can easily encourage people to come back and promote your products.
Order confirmation
Thank you message – Make it clear that the order was placed successfully
The first and foremost goal of a thank you page is confirming the order. Without a clear confirmation that the order has successfully been placed, some customers will be confused and start looking for further tasks to complete the order.
To assure customers that the order has successfully been placed, the thank you message should strictly follow these criteria:
- Make it visually prominent so that customers can spot it at a glance
- Use coherent and concise language: Within a few words, make it clear that the order has been placed successfully. Try to avoid multi-meaning and general statements without a specific message being delivered.
- Take into account the psychology of color: Blue, black, white, green rank for the top color of trust and security, according to CoSchedule Blog. To some extent, this information might be helpful in improving your thankyou page UX.
B&H Photo implements its thank you message just excellently and is definitely a good example. Nike’s is also a good example when it comes to thank you messages.
Precisely wording costs you nothing. When it directly affects customer experience, make it as clear as possible that the order has been placed.
Provide clear information about the order confirmation email
People rely primarily on order confirmation emails to verify their order information. This leads to the fact that many people remain idle on the order confirmation pages until the email comes.
People are afraid that their information will be lost once they close the page. Some even take a screenshot of the page. This is clearly a workaround that technically won’t happen if the thank you page is informative enough.
Following the “Thank you” message, try to include the essential information to assure people while they’re waiting for the email:
- An indication that the email is being sent
- The email address the email is being sent to
- When to expect the email: A detailed estimation of how long the email should arrive
Display full order details
Along with information about the confirmation email, make sure your thank you pages include details about the order. In the worst case when the email cannot be sent, customers can use the thank you page as a type of “invoice”.
- Order tracking number
- The ordered products: Title, variant, price, thumbnails if possible.
- The shipping address
- The total cost of the order, including any additional cost.
- The payment method that was used, including any discount applied
Optimize the post-purchase experience
Allow customers to log out of their accounts
Many people are naturally against creating accounts. Once the order is completed, logging out is the first thing they seek out upon finishing their order.
For sites that require accounts for a checkout, including an option to sign out can help satisfy customers’ basic needs.
The Sign out option though doesn’t necessarily need to be visually highlighted. It only needs to be available when customers seek.
Provide backup options in case customers don’t receive the email
To get your customer best prepared for this worst case scenario, provide backup options with detailed instruction how to handle the situation:
- Resend the order confirmation email
- Take a screenshot: Not everyone is tech-savvy enough to take screenshots with the default options
- Print the page: In case resending the email doesn’t work, printing the page provides customers with a record of their order that doesn’t require any digital tracking.
Consider engaging customers with additional marketing activities
When customers finish confirming order information, many fall into a state of not knowing what to do. If no further action is implemented, most customers take the easiest action to exit the page.
Many actions are suggested to be avoided during the checkout process. Now that the order is done and your customers might be satisfied, you can take advantage of an open window for additional marketing activities that boost engagement.
Ask customers to register an account
Asking customers to register for an account is a quick and easy way to save their information and grow a loyal customer list.
If during the checkout process, requiring an account is not recommended as it can lead to cart abandonment, a thank you page is the ideal moment to ask for an optional account registration.
Once the order is completed, you are supposed to already have the customer’s email. Auto Filling the email provided and only asking for a password would make the process easier.
Provide an option to continue shopping
When it comes to optimizing the checkout process, sites are recommended to use enclosed checkout, which means hiding the navigation menu during checkout to avoid needless distractions.
For sites with enclosed checkout, it could be difficult for customers to continue shopping once they complete the order as people cannot casually click links from the navigation menu to come back.
In cases like this, a Continue Shopping option is essential. Lacking this option is an avoidable pitfall and might cost you many potential orders.
Recommend more product for cross-sells
Recommending related products is a good way to encourage customers to continue shopping. However, it’s important that the recommended products must be well-aligned to the previously-purchased items.
Only by recommending actually-related products can you encourage customers to continue their exploring experience.
Provide resources that help utilize the products
Many products require initial instructions for customers to be able to use. In such cases, including tutorial resources to help customers use and utilize the products would be highly effective, both for customers and for your content promoting purpose.
Ask customers to connect on social media
Another way customers can continue their engagement with your brand is via social channels. Instead of simply asking them to share your products (without any incentives), suggesting that there’s more to explore on your social media channels is more intriguing.
However, in order for the trick to actually work, your social media channels need to be best-prepared and should ideally be updated with the newest arrivals and the occasional promo code.
Conduct a quick survey
Similar to account registration, conducting a survey is a practice that is not recommended during the checkout process. On the thank you page, when the cart has been secured, it’s the ideal time to conduct a survey and collect feedback about customers’ shopping experience.
Offers for future purchases
To encourage customers to continue shopping or come back in the future, offering discounts is a simple but effective hack. Try to be subtle when offering any discount and think carefully about your profit margins.
A discount for birthdays is a brilliant suggestion. A loyalty program is also an idea that can boost your sales and grow your loyal customer list simultaneously.
Great thank you pages for your inspiration
Below are five of the best thank you pages, ranked by Baymard’s Institute who conducts UX research on 60 top-gross ecommerce websites.
Though being ranked as the best thank you pages, Disney Store was reported to stand out from its peers with Good performance.
The remaining four pages which are the next choices in the range of website’s thank you page performance, all deliver just a decent performance and contain errors every now and then.
Take a look at the goods and the bads to see if there’s anything you can apply for your thank you pages.
Disney Store
The Disney Store adheres to almost all best practices. With a clean layout, it delivers order details and information about a confirmation email coherently.
An option to print the page is included, a button to call for account registration and options to connect with its social media are all included and implemented cautiously.
Foot Locker
Foot Locker’s thank you page performance is considered decent. While order information is included well, the site lacks a clear indication of when and where the email is being sent to.
Besides those errors, Foot Locker performs well when it comes to account registration.
Northern Tool
Clear order details, email confirmation, ‘print the page’ option and a quick survey are what Northern Tool is doing well.
Similar to Foot Locker, Northern Tool lacks a clear statement of when the email is supposed to arrive at customers’ inbox. The general “Thank you for your order” is also not a good alternative for an explicit “The order has been placed” message.
William Sonoma
Williams Sonoma applies the account registration technique well, which automatically derives the email address from the order information and only requires passwords. Along with that, other sections are implemented properly.
Again, it cannot avoid the pitfall of not providing a detailed indication of when customers can expect to get the email.
H&M
The best thing about H&M’s thank you page is the clean layout that creates a sense of calm and stillness. It’s the additional options on the page footer that makes the connection between the site and its customers closer.
This eases the concern people have when waiting for a confirmation email without clear expectation when to receive it.
Learn more
Credit: This guide uses research findings from the Baymard Institute’s e-commerce UX research.
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