Having one or more ‘Thank You’ pages on your website can be useful for your data collection purposes as well as customer service reasons. A ‘Thank You’ page is typically used after a customer or potential customer completes some type of transaction on your site. If you sell online, it could be a page that a customer lands on after completing a purchase. If you have contact or service inquiry forms on your site, the ‘Thank You’ page can be what’s shown to a person after they’ve submitted a form. ‘Thank You’ pages are also helpful when using a 3rd party tool for a sales landing page or opt-in page, and you want to redirect traffic back to your website to give you the chance to track that activity with your Facebook pixel. 

Regardless of what you are using a ‘Thank You’ page for, you can customize the text on that page to better address the next steps your customer should expect from you now that they’ve completed some type of transaction with you, while also allowing you the chance to show your appreciation for their interest or purchase and direct them to valuable links for them to check out. 

If you are using Google Analytics to monitor and track all of your website’s activity (which you should be), you can create a Google Analytics Goal for that ‘Thank You’ page. First, you’d need to create the Thank You page on your website. This page should not be added to any Menu (i.e. site navigation) since it’s a page that no one should be visiting unless they’ve been redirected there as part of the completed conversion process. After you create the goal in Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see additional data like the source of the goal (meaning, how the website visitor first landed on your site and where they came from) and the pages visited on your site before reaching your ‘Thank You’ page (called the Reverse Goal Path). The path your website visitors take leading up to your ‘Thank You’ page can provide valuable insight into how your website flow is designed and what pages seem to generate more action.

Let’s talk about how to set up goal tracking of that ‘Thank You’ page in your Google Analytics account.

Setting Up a Google Analytics Goal for your Thank You Page

Sign in to your Google Analytics account. Click on the Admin tab (gear icon) at the bottom of the menu on the left side. Then click on Goals under the View column on the right. 

Click to create a New Goal.

Choose the goal type that best fits your situation. At the bottom of the list, you can choose “Custom” if none of the preset goal types is a good fit. Once you have selected your Goal type, click Continue.

Name your Goal Description and choose the “Destination” radio button since we’re tracking people who reached your Thank You page. 

Type the URL of your Thank You page into the field at Step 3. Select “Begins with” and enter the portion of your Thank You page link that comes after YourURL.com. 

There’s a blue Verify button, but it can take some time after setting up and saving your goal before verification will be positive.

Once you receive at least 1 goal completion, you’ll see the count in the Conversions –> Goals –> Overview section of your Google Analytics dashboard.