Congratulations! Your landing page earned a conversion. Don’t get too comfortable, though. You need to push marketing ROI even higher, and you can do that with landing page optimization for your confirmation pages.
Too many websites have useless confirmation pages. Visitors fill out forms, buy a product, or download content, and all the page says is, “thanks!” What it should say is, “if you liked that, you’re going to love this!”
Companies spend millions of dollars to drive traffic to websites. A small, highly engaged fraction of that traffic converts and is still on the site. You have their attention. Engage them!
Re-engagement should begin immediately after purchase on an ecommerce site. Lead nurturing should continue immediately after downloads on a B2B site. Your goal should be to build relationships with these people. Don’t dump them like a one-night stand!
Rules of engagement for confirmation pages
Below is a list of test ideas for your conformation pages. But before we get to that, let’s set some ground rules for your offers:
Rule #1. Make it valuable
Whatever you offer, it must be valuable. You have the visitor’s attention, but she’s tired at this point. You need to offer something really good to get her excited again. Incentives and freebies will help.
Rule #2. Make it easy
There should be one call-to-action on a confirmation page and it should not ask for much. The visitor has already filled out a form or gone through the checkout. You have all the information, so she should be able to sign up for your emails or loyalty program with a click or two.
Rule #3. Make it relevant
Whatever you offer, it must be relevant to the completed conversion. The person came to your website in a certain mood and took a specific action. Your next call-to-action needs to stay in that context.
Confirmation page ideas and tactics
By now you must realize that one generic confirmation page will not suit your website. Your site has more than one conversion goal, and one page cannot be relevant and valuable to them all.
You will have to test different tactics. Keep in mind that you will likely have more success by pushing for engagement instead of a second purchase (that can come later).
Here are the tactics:
#1. Coupons and discounts –remarketing beings now. Ecommerce sites can give customers 10% off for a second purchase made within 30 days. You can make things really interesting by offering 20% off for the next 30 minutes. The image at the top of this article is a good example of this from Shutterfly, found in Smashing Magazine.
#2. Email marketing – whatever people download or purchase, you can offer to send a weekly 5-part series with more information. This will forge relationships that lead to repeat customers. Of course, you can also offer a relevant email newsletter or alert program (example: “click here to receive an email when we publish more on this topic”).
#3. Share and follow – Too many confirmation pages ask people to follow a company on Facebook or Twitter without offering a reason why. Give people an incentive. Give them 10% off for following you on Facebook. Give them a $10 credit for each person they bring to your site through Twitter who converts.
#4. Loyalty programs – If you have a loyalty club or points system, this is a great time to ask visitors to sign up. They should only have to click once. They can confirm via email and setup a password later.
#5. Related content – suggest related ebooks, blog posts, whitepapers, and upcoming webinars. The person is engaging your website. Try to keep him there.
In the example below, the marketing automation software provider Marketo points visitors who downloaded a whitepaper to a company blog. The page also recommends related content as a secondary call-to-action.
#6. Related products – don’t expect customers to load more items into the cart without a big incentive. However, they may click to learn more about related products. Try to recommend complimentary items, not replacements.
The people who convert enjoy your company. They came, they saw, they converted. It’s only reasonable to assume that they would like to continue the relationship. Give them easy, valuable ways to engage and you will cut the amount of time it takes for them to return and convert again. By Jon Correll.
Just a note to say thanks for this article. Very helpful.
I’m a copywriter looking for ways to give my clients more value and you’ve added to my knowledge.
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I deal in “real products” as opposed to the info products market and the one tactic I believe pays off more than any other is the offer of discount off future purchases.
Thanks for the article.
This made me make few quick changes in my confirmation pages that were due for long. Your post pushed me without any further delay. Many thanks for such a clear info.
This page was related to what I was looking for but not exactly. I am looking for an outline for a confirmation email for higher conversions once a visitor signs up for our email list. We always use double confirmation so we have the visitor click on a link in an email to confirm their subscription to our mailing list. Our conversion rate of a confirmation seems low even though we do not yet deliver the free product for signing up. Maybe the emails are going to spam/trash… not sure. But we want to make the confirmation email the best possible. Any solutions for that email outline?