In a previous article, we discussed why you should invest in customer retention, and why your thank you page is the perfect place to do it in.

This post will take it a step further and discuss exactly how you can use your thank you page to re-convert customers that just completed a purchase, and turn them to returning customers.

There are a lot of ways to increase your customer retention rate, some of which are: good customer service and product, re-targeting ads and distribution lists (email, messenger, etc). But as we discussed in our last post, none of them has one very important thing that your thank you page has- 100% open rate.

So how can you utilize all the attention your thank you page generates?

1. Up-sell related products

One of the best ways to generate repeating sells for your business is to up-sell related products straight from the thank you page.

With today's verity of stores, sites and social media networks out there, getting customers to your store is becoming less easy and more expansive. And setting them to buy? Even more so.

So naturally, when we have them in our store, we want to make sure that they buy as much as possible, and that we get a positive return on the investment we made getting them in the door.

One of the ways to do it is with up-selling related products or sets. If you are serious about maximizing your revenue, you're probably up-selling every opportunity you have. Whatever it's when the customer is browsing the store, arriving at checkout or receiving emails from you, he is probably seeing suggested products to add to cart.

Using the thank you page to suggest products related to the purchase the customer just made is a great way to use this last opportunity you have to capture his attention before he leaves the store.

2. Offer a re-order option with a discount

Offering the customer the option repurchase the exact same product he just bought with a discount could be the perfect opportunity to squeeze more revenue from an existing order.

For a customer that is still pumped about the products he bought on your store, it feels more like adding another product to an existing order than making a second one.

This method might not be a fit for every e-commerce industry- if you are selling furniture, for example, your customer might not want to buy the exact same couch moments after the first purchase.

Who will this be a good fit for?

Think about a pizza store, offering the customer a second family size pizza for half the price moments after buying the first one- a hungry customer is pretty likely to take the offer.

Or an apparel store, offering the customer the exact same shirt, but with the option to choose a different color, for 30% off? For a customer that contemplated what color to choose just moments ago, this offer would be highly tempting.

I'm sure you can think about if and how this feature can help you generate revenue from a customer that is still hyped from the product he just purchased.

3. Encourage social sharing

Another great way to utilize your thank you page, without shoving a hard sell down your customers' throat, is to encourage them to share your store and their purchase on social media.

With customers getting smarter and smarter, with more options open to them, they also trust advertising less and less. What do our customers trust? Their friends' recommendations.

Customers referred to your store are 71% more likely to convert than customers that were not referred. Noways, when so many of our social interactions are made through social media, it's the perfect opportunity to let your customers easily tell their friends about you.

You can do it by displaying easy social sharing buttons right below your order summary; and you can take it a step further and offer a discount for the next purchase or a cashback for the latest purchase in exchange for sharing your store.

Either way, don't miss the chance to encourage sharing.

4. Display a time sensitive pop up

What if your customer is only coming to the thank you page to view his order summary, and completely ignores the hooks for his attention you placed there?

Well, you can always catch his attention with a pop-up that forces him to at least review the offer.

You can use this pop up to offer a discount, a special promotion or even a freebie that'll up-sell something else. But it is important that you use this feature wisely, and offer something of value, that doesn't make your customer feel exasperated by irrelevant promotions he keeps seeing.

One way to encourage the customer to make the decision about your offer now, and not "sleep on it", is with a timer counting down the time until the offer expires. This both creates urgency and makes the offer seem more special- a gift for people who just bought in your store, because you appreciate them.

5. Collect information about your customers

Making your communication with your customers as personal as possible is a good general best practice- as merchants, we want to help them feel connected to our brand and let them know we care about them personally.

But the only way to make your communication personal is by knowing things about your customers (and we don't mean it in a creepy way!). The fact that the customer completed a purchase provides us with some basic information about them- name, where they live, products they like and maybe gender.

But what if you take it a step further and use some extra data about your customers to make them feel extra special whenever you talk to them?

You can use your thank you page to ask for information that might be relevant for the future: birthday (so you can send them a happy birthday gift or discount), why they need this specific product (so you can offer others that answer the same need), interests (so that you can offer a customized subscription) and more.

A customer that gives you some basic information about himself can later see that you use it just so you can go the extra mile in your communication and service.

6. Ask your customers to answer a survey

Surveys are a great way to understand your customers and their experience with your store better.

A lot of businesses ask their customers to answer a survey via email, but just like open rates for emails, the percentage of people actually taking the time to remember their purchasing experience and answer the survey, is low.

When you ask a customer with a fresh shopping experience to tell you about it, you have a much higher chance to actually get an answer. If we had an exceptionally good or bad experience with a business, we usually want to talk about it immediately, and forget about it over time.

An added bonus of asking the customer's feedback right at the thank you page is that is shows you care about their experience, and redeems you just a little bit, in case the shopping experience wasn't as good as desired.

7. Collect more distribution list sign-ups

One of the strongest assets you have as a merchant is your distribution list. It allows you to advertise new products and promotions without using paid advertising, and to just keep in touch with your customers over time.

Chances are you get your customers' email address at checkout, and opt-in for other lists is optional (SMS, Facebook messenger, push etc). The thank you page is a great place to ask, again, if the customer would like to opt-in to one of these lists (which tend to have a higher open rate then emails).

Why would they opt-in on the thank you page if they refused in others? Simple- they have already purchased from you, they would definitely like to hear back from you regarding shipping updates. It is an opportunity to offer to send them these updates via alternative methods and encourage them to sign up.

8. Interact with your customers through video

We know that in marketing, video gets much higher engagement than text or picture, but did you know that the average user spends 88% more time on a site that has video?

We just love videos, and so do our customers. It keeps them engaged longer, and has a higher probability of them watching than reading a written text section. Adding video to the thank you page is a great opportunity to convey a message in a more engaging, easy to consume way. So give your brand a face and a voice by using video to communicate with your customers.

Some ideas for how to use video on your thank you page are: say thank you, detail the delivery and shipping process, give information regarding the usage of the product, promote a new product, display happy customers' testimonials, and more.

9. Establish your authority in your niche

Like we've said, you don't have to use the thank you page to shove sales down your customers' throats, you can also use it as means to keep them on your site and to re-establish your brand's authority in your niche.

By displaying a blog post extract, with a link back to your blog, you can offer a customer that just purchased, let's say, a vacuum, to read about your top 10 tips on cleaning your home in less than an hour (is such a thing even possible?).

It's a great opportunity to not only show your customers that you are a brand that knows it's customers and the subjects that interest them, but also keep them on your store for longer and maybe get them to buy a product you recommended on your blog.

10. Collect product reviews

We've discussed already the importance of peer recommendations and social proof, and product reviews are a huge part of that.

The more positive reviews your products and store have, the more easily your customers will trust you and more likely they are to buy. In fact, the staggering data shows that customers who view user generated-content show a 133% higher conversion rate!

The struggle is usually to actually get the customers to write a review- they tend to write it if they are exceptionally unhappy or exceptionally happy, anything in between gets ignored.

In your thank you page, you can ask for reviews on the store, or even ask for reviews on previous orders if this is not the customer's first order.

The customer, who's still on your site, is much more likely to comply with the request then he is when you ask him to stop in the middle of reading emails and write it.

11. Bonus for Shopify merchants- show shipping updates

On the Shopify platform, your thank you page turns into your order status page- the one the customers keep coming back to if they want to find their tracking number.

But by default, your order status page only display the tracking number. By integrating your carrier or any tracking service you are using into the thank you page, you turn it into the page your customers come back to every time they want to get an update about their package.

This makes the thank you page extra strong- think about your customers seeing whatever promotions you've put there whenever they come back to see how their package is progressing!

In Conclusion

We hope this post gave you an idea about how to use your thank you page to generate more revenue for your online store.

If you're wondering how to implement these tips, we've got an amazing thank you page optimizer for Shopify, that'll do all this and more, coming up soon. We invite you to subscribe to our mailing list and follow us on social media to be one of the first to know when the app launches.