Hi, Tim! Here are my high-level thoughts (happy to muse more with you about this if you have follow up questions):

I think there is an eloquent way to upsell or cross-sell on a post-purchase Thank You page. By making a purchase they have signaled to you that they like buying your products and I think it’s safe to assume if they liked doing it once, there’s a good chance they will perceive follow-up buying opportunities as benefit opportunities rather than hard-sells.

Take Amazon for example (see image below): They say thank you, they offer information about your purchase (so the page has a purpose other than selling to you), and then they quite subtly extend an invitation for you to check out some items that are related to the item that you just bought. I think it’s important that your follow-up purchase opportunity is presented in a way that has a helpful connotation (“if you like this, you may also like this!” Look how helpful we are!) rather than pushy (You gave us money? Awesome! Now give us more! Now!.)

Now, what about upsells or cross-sells on Thank You pages that follow requests for information. Do we want to hard-sell them on these Thank You pages? I think at the ‘request for information’ point in the buying cycle they’re still feeling you out. They are interested in you, they want to know more, they are right on the edge of buying, so it’s probably best to give them more of what they want– information, reading, content, links to product pages. Keep them on your page; tell them more about you! I’d use that opportunity to build your relationship and sell them on how awesome you are before you try to sneak in their pocketbook.

If you have a free trial, that may be a good in between offer to extend on a ‘more information’ Thank You page.

What do you think?

Thanks for this great article. What do you think about upselling/crosselling after people order some product/place a request for information. In the Netherlands we will see that more webshops/websites use upsel to get more sales.

Grz,

Tim

Glad you enjoyed the post, Greg! I call those pages you disdain “Thank You, Now Get Off My Lawn” pages.

If someone walked up to you at a trade show and said “I am interested in buying your product” you wouldn’t say “Thank You” and then walk away– you would engage them; ask them more about themselves, offer more information about you, or offer a way for them to keep in touch. In my opinion, it’s a missed opportunity not to apply these same principals to your on-site Thank You page design and content.

Keep in touch and let me know how your Thank You page remodel pans out. I’d love to see the final product.

You’ve got a lot of great tips here that I’m going to start working into my pages.