Everyone has pet peeves. Mine is when I make a purchase at a store and thank the clerk or store owner (because that’s the polite thing to do when someone is performing a service, paid or not), and I receive a half-hearted and mumbled “welcome” in return. Why does this make my skin crawl?

Primarily, it’s because businesses should be the first to extend a thank you to their customers for choosing to shop there. Really, there’s no excuse for not showing customer appreciation. As business owners, we don’t simply permit customers to shop, we welcome them to shop. We’re honored to know that customers have chosen us over the competition.

How you can extend the same goodwill to your online visitors? First and foremost, through thank-you pages.

Let’s take a look at:

• How thank-you pages are defined
• Why you should use thank-you pages
• How to create an effective thank-you page

What is a Thank-You Page?

Simply put, a thank-you page is what the viewer sees after filling out a form. It’s an opportunity for you, as an online business to take the initiative to say “Thank you for stopping by”. A prospect has chosen your website over thousands, and then taken the initiative to reach out to you and offer their contact information.

Feel privileged? You should! And by all means, you should let your prospects know that you’re grateful.

Some sites have opted for an inline thank you message rather than creating an entirely new thank-you page. While that’s nice, too, let’s check out why the thank-you page is the preferred option.

Why You Should Use Thank-You Pages

Thank you messages typically keep the viewer on the landing page, even after completing the form. Not having one is somewhat equivalent to kicking readers to the curb on a dark and lonely street. It’s not a friendly move.

If you’ve carefully crafted your landing page, it includes few options, if any, to navigate off the page, since the focus is to convert your viewer into a lead by filling out a form. However, after the conversion process, you don’t want to force your viewers to remain on a page with no further navigation. It’s unlikely that they’ll go searching for a way to get back to your site and poke around some more.

The thank-you page fixes this problem. The viewer receives a thank-you message on a new page, and the ability to navigate to other content on your site.

That brings us to our final point…

How to Create an Effective Thank-You Page

I get it. You’ve painstakingly created a piece of content, a CTA to promote it, and a landing page to convert viewers. These are not quick tasks. However, the good news is that creating a thank-you page is probably the fastest step in your workflow. Plus, after you create a template, it’s a piece of cake to repurpose the same page with a few minor tweaks.

Here’s the anatomy of a great thank-you page:

• A header that includes your clickable company logo
• A polite thank-you message that specifies the content the viewer has requested
• A redirect to related content, such as “In the meantime, check out this blog post on XYZ,” or “Don’t miss out on any more awesome content! Subscribe to our blog.”
• A captivating image
• Social sharing buttons or messages (I just downloaded my free ebook, The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, from Seapoint Digital)

Saying “thank you” to your viewers doesn’t take a lot of time, and the payoff is big. You’ll land happy prospects who know you’re appreciative of their patronage.