Thank you pages

Almost every website today has a form on it, where customers can go and ask questions, post comments, etc. After the user has found your website, dug around a little bit, then said you know what, I have a question to ask, or a comment to post.

They navigate over to your form, spend a few minutes typing it in, and press send. Then what happens? Well besides the email getting sent to you.

The user see's a confirmation or thank you page. Typically these need to contain a few important elements.

• A thank you message, they did just spend a minute to tell you something, tell them thank you!
• A response time, let them know how soon they can expect a reply
• Urgency reminder, let them know that if it is important, they can call you! Or stop by. Perhaps they just couldnt find your phone number, here is how to remind them.

Those are the basic things, but really, you should take it one step further. We don't want these thank you pages to be a dead end. A place where they are stumped and just go on to a competitors site, or someplace else.

We have an opportunity here, a rare one where a potential, current, or past customer just took a moment to inform you of something. They wouldnt do that unless they were happy or confident in your ability to meet their needs. Sieze that opportunity, enhance your contact page by doing something in addition to saying thank you! Things such as:

• Giving them a discount for letting you know something
• Tell them about another product or service they may not have even known about that you offer. Link them to that page.
• Give them an opportunity to tell a friend about how great your X, Y, or Z is.
• Directions, perhaps they just wanted to know where, give them a link to your location page.
• Hours - restate your hours again.
• Promote a great resource, you are probably an expert in your product, what is your favorite resource to learn more about this, either it is your own site, or an associates. Get them more involved, so they will buy or do more with you in the future.

The internet is amazing, it has everything you can think of on it, but it is also a great tool for communicating, building a community. Use your site to help build and foster a community, it will help set you apart from the competition.

So I encourage you to all take a few minutes today, and update your contact form, that part that a user see's after they have sent you a message.