If you’re doing business online then your ideal customer journey goes something like this:
- a web visitor hits your site,
- they see your call to action (CTA),
- they click it and head over to your goal page, and
- they complete whatever the desired action is (like completing a subscription form or buying a product).
Then, once you’ve gotten what you wanted it’s time to say thanks. And that’s called a… success page.
Still not sure what a success page is?
It should be easy to get your head around it if you simply look at it as a digital thank-you. On a practical level, it confirms to your visitor that the action has been processed. That’s why sometimes you’ll hear it referred to as a confirmation page. But from a web-smarts perspective, your success page is a massive opportunity. One that I bet you’re wasting right now! So firstly, if you don’t have a thank-you page for action on your website, then you need to talk to your developer ASAP, because you need one (actually I’d recommend you have a specific message for every different type of action)…. after all, it’s only polite to say thanks! But I don’t want to focus on techy stuff today. I want to talk about what really matters and that’s: boosting your online results. Let’s talk about how to maximise the success of your success pages.
What’s the point of mucking around with my success pages If I’ve already gotten the action I wanted?
A success page is your final opportunity to grab ‘em while they’re hot. They’ve just completed an action that says they trust and like you… so capitalise on it by asking for something else! I always advise my web clients to have at least 2 actions they want from their website visitors. A primary action and a secondary action. For example, if you’ve gotten your visitor to sign-up for a newsletter to your swanky new restaurant, wouldn’t you like them to actually come and TRY your restaurant? How about offering a downloadable discount voucher giving them a half-price Tuesday deal? Or perhaps you’d like to increase your social presence by getting more people to sign up to your Facebook ‘I love swanky food’ page? Of course you do, so ask them to sign up and give them a good reason why. That’s what a good success page can do for you.
How to optimise your success page for even more success.
Well, just like creating any effective call to action, you need to keep it simple, tell them what they should do (just one thing mind you, don’t give them options or you’ll confuse them) and… make it easy. It’s best if you can make it visual, but any call to action is better than none. You will probably need your web developer’s help to get this to work, or alternately you could use an effective service like Unbounce, they do great landing pages and they offer customisable success pages as part of that process. Or, if you use WordPress, then using Premise by Copyblogger could work for you too. Yes it’s all a bit of fiddling around at first, but when you start seeing the deeper engagement you’re creating with your web visitors, you’ll build even more trust and then… you’ll start seeing an increase in sales. That’s when you’ll realise it’s all been worth the hassle, believe me! Good luck ABN’ers! Bianca
