Blog

Tips for Empowering your Thank You page

Every point of contact with a customer or prospect is an opportunity to provide better customer service, and to plant the seeds for a sale.  Your Thank You pages should confer your thanks, but it also can offer customers and visitors to your site something they may not have noticed, and that may be of interest to them.

Most of us don’t fully utilize the Thank You pages that get displayed after purchases, or when an inquiry is made via a form.  Too often, those pages, simply say “Thank You” or “Thank You for your order” or something like, “Your request is being processed. We’ll get back to you soon.”

Those types of pages are better than nothing, but they are missed opportunities. So, here are some tips for empowering your Thank You pages.

If you offer online shopping:

  1. Make the words Thank You bigger than the other text. While you are at it, tell them you appreciate their business
  2. Be sure to prominently display your Toll-Free phone number. If you don’t have a Toll-Free number, you are not serious about wanting customers.
  3. Have a link to the Customer Account login page.
  4. Display the special of the day, week, or month.
  5. Display at least two items, saying, “People who bought this also bought these items:”
  6. Have a link to your “Specials” or other RSS feeds
  7. Have links to your Shipping & Returns pages.
  8. Make sure your Thank You page has <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>  in the header,  so you don’t mess up your analytics. The only time anyone should see your Thank You page is after they place an order or fill out another form.
  9. Use  Adwords conversion tracking on your Thank You page. If you are not using Google AdWords, you should be.

If you don’t offer online shopping, you likely have a Contact, Request Info, or Sign Up form. Here are some tips for you.

  1. Make the words Thank You bigger than the other text. While you are at it, tell them you appreciate the time they gave you.
  2. Be sure to prominently display your Toll-Free phone number. If you don’t have a Toll-Free number, you are not serious about wanting customers.
  3. Prominently display an email address they can use if they want to contact you later instead of having to use your form again.
  4. Display and have a link to a daily, weekly, or monthly feature or  News (RSS) Feed.
  5. Make sure your Thank You page has <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>  in the header, so  you don’t mess up your analytics. The only time anyone should see your Thank You page is after they  fill out a form.
  6. If you are using Google AdWords, use conversion tracking on your Thank You page.

Use as few or as many of these tips that are appropriate for your site. As with any page, I am not suggesting a bunch of clutter. Use some thought as to positioning, layout and use of white space.

Turn that Thank You page into a customer service and sales opportunity!

Please add your own tips or thoughts by leaving a comment.

Broadband Deployment in Rural Wisconsin

If you are one of our Wisconsin readers, please help yourself and/or your friends in rural Wisconsin by filling out the Wisconsin Broadband Survey.  The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin is gathering information that will hopefully lead to reliable, affordable broadband service for those who are in unserved and underserved areas.

The PS C expects to play a role in implementing the State Broadband Data and Development Grant program, which also received funding under the stimulus bill.  The recently passed federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provides for grants to map and deploy broadband, especially to unserved and underserved areas.

The Wisconsin Broadband Survey form can be used for businesses and individuals. Please avail yourself of this opportunity to be heard.  Everyone in Wisconsin can benefit from this.

Please fill it out today!

Keywords, Ad Copy, Landing Pages – Triumvirate

Talking about Pay-Per-Click, Google AdWords mostly, search results and landing pages is pretty much a daily thing around our office. Accordingly, it makes sense to talk about it here.

Recently I had the opportunity, thanks to Andy Lewis, to be a part of a Webinar for “The National e-Commerce Extension Initiative” named “Maximizing Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign.”  We concentrated on Google AdWords. Why? It is my humble opinion that for most, a limited advertising budget is a reality. Google is the 500-pound Gorilla, and if you are going to feed web advertising money to anyone, it should be Google with over 72% of U.S. searches reported for February, 2009 according to Hitwise.

Last week I met with several representatives of one our largest clients, and discussed mostly AdWords and Analytics for the better part of the afternoon. In both cases we talked about Keywords, Ad Copy, Landing Pages at length. Why? Having high placements in Google AdWords or Google organic search results is directly related to those three powerful terms. They rule this world as surely as many of the Triumvirates of history.

The importance of Keywords, Ad Copy, Landing Pages, is a simple concept, while not difficult, that is complex in implementation when done correctly. The good news is, you don’t have to spend in inordinate amount of time working on your AdWords campaigns to get some immediate results. Very simply, just make sure your keywords are in your ad copy and on your landing pages (prominently). If you do that, you will see your Click-Through-Rate, aka CTR, improve as well as your placement.

If you, or your search professional, spend the time on your landing pages to write keyword-relevant “Titles,” meta “Descriptions,” Headings, and content including the keywords that potential visitors would using when searching for your product, service, or information, and you write quality ads, as well as conducting ad-variant testing, you will be rewarded with increased, targeted, self-qualified traffic. Serious keyword research, a knowledge of how Google likes your pages coded, and knowing how to write and place that code is part of what will take your AdWords campaign to another level. Of course a thorough knowledge of AdWords and your analytics program is necessary as well if you want optimum results. To that end, unless you have a lot of spare time, working with a search professional who has experience and successes on their resume is essential.

One of the cool benefits, is that, the time you, or your search professional, spend on your “landing pages” will eventually manifest itself as higher rankings in Google’s search result pages, aka SERPs. Google sells relevance. Make sure your site search strategy, both PPC and organic, includes relevant keywords, ad copy, and landing pages.

Keywords, Ad Copy, Landing Pages – The Triumvirate!

SearchWiki – Google lets you change search results

For better or worse, on November 20th, Google rolled out their new SearchWiki feature. Before you will see the feature, and can use it, you’ll need a Google Account, and have to be logged in.

Google says, “With just a single click you can move the results (you’ll see an arrow and an ‘X’ to the right of each result) you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.”

Google also says, “The changes you make only affect your own searches.” But is that really true? I can’t help but wonder about a few aspects of this new “feature.”

  1. How many users have, will have, or ever know what a Google Account is?
  2. User comments – “the wisdom of the masses” or “the madness of crowds” or perhaps a place of disgruntled people or unethical marketers.  It seems more people voice their complaints than their satisfaction. Oh, by the way, your Google nickname is displayed to everyone along with your comment. (Using links at the bottom of the search results page (SERP), you may edit/delete your comments, and view comments from others.)
  3. One can only speculate on whether or not Google will consider the “popularity” of sites that have been moved to the top by many users, when Google serves search results to those without Google Accounts.
  4. Bosses could be fooled by in-house webmasters, and unscrupulous search engine optimization (SEO) firms could show prospects whatever rankings they wished (good or bad), by saying, “here is a screenshot of Google search results for this morning.”
  5. Add an URL – Will Google track (I believe the answer is yes) and use that information for general search results? We can only speculate about the latter. Speaking of adding an URL, wouldn’t you just bookmark it instead of adding it to search results?

The release of SearchWiki also makes me start to wonder how much Google is in tune with their average user as opposed to those in Silicon Valley.

Time and users will tell, but I can’t help but think Google would have better spent the time and money on their “Proposal for reducing U.S. dependence on fossil fuels.

Until next time…

Home Page – Simple as One, Two, Three

Simple as One, Two, Three? Well, almost. The basic concept of a home page really should be that simple. That said, it takes work to make something worthwhile and simple.

Whether visitors realize it or not, they are asking themselves three things when they land on your home page. Here is what they are asking, and what you can do.

  1. Am I in the right place? You have only seconds to get a visitor’s attention. Communicate clearly (write simply), be careful of using industry jargon that your visitor may not understand (or may make their eyes cloud over). Use visuals. Don’t clutter.
  2. Do I believe these people? Build confidence. Do you look credible? Are you real people? Are these items easy-to-find: phone number, email address, address, photos of your business and/or staff?
  3. Where do I go now? Can I buy something, learn something, look at photos, leave a comment, contact you?

If you do your job well enough that visitors decide to click to other pages, give them consistent page design, with clear navigation, and page layout that puts things where your visitors expect to find them.

There you have it. Three simple steps to a quality home page.