Every form has one, and almost every one says the same thing. Thanks for getting in touch, we will get back to you shortly. It was written when the form was built, probably by accepting a default, and it has not been looked at since.
This is strange, because it is the one page you can be certain the person is looking at. They have just done the thing you wanted, they are paying more attention than at any other point in the visit, and they are in a receptive mood because they have finished something.
Every other page on the site gets argued over. This one gets a default, and the default is a full stop where there should have been a comma.
What the person is actually thinking
Understanding the moment helps. Somebody who has just submitted an enquiry has one immediate question, which is whether that worked and what happens now. Underneath it is a quieter one, which is whether they made a good decision.
The standard page answers the first badly and the second not at all. Shortly is not a timescale, it is a word people use when they do not want to commit to one, and everybody reads it that way. It converts a moment of completion into a small uncertainty.
Answering both questions properly takes two sentences, and it is the single highest-return rewrite available on most websites precisely because the bar is currently so low.
Shortly is not a timescale. It is the word you use when you would rather not give one.
Say when, specifically
The first improvement is to replace shortly with a number. We reply to every enquiry within one working day. You will hear from us by Tuesday. Someone will call you this afternoon.
A specific promise does three things. It removes the uncertainty, which is worth something on its own. It stops people enquiring elsewhere in the meantime, because they have a reason to wait. And it sets a standard your business then has to meet, which is uncomfortable and is the point.
If you cannot promise a timescale you will actually hit, the honest version still beats the vague one. We are usually two or three days at this time of year is a real answer and people respect it considerably more than shortly.
Tell them what will happen
The second improvement is to describe the next step rather than merely its timing. People are more comfortable when they know the shape of what is coming, particularly if it involves a phone call they have not yet decided they want.
A short sequence works well. We will read this today, one of our surveyors will email you with a couple of questions, and then we will send a written quote. That is three sentences and it removes almost every source of anxiety about having submitted the form.
It also quietly manages expectations. Somebody who knows a quote takes three days is not annoyed on day two, whereas somebody who was told shortly starts wondering on day one whether the form worked at all.
Give them something to do
The page is also the only moment when somebody's attention is entirely yours and they have nothing to do with it. Most sites waste that by offering nothing, and a few waste it worse by offering everything at once.
One suggestion is the right number. A calendar link for anybody who would rather book now than wait for a reply. A short piece worth reading that relates to what they asked about. The case study for the service they enquired about. Not a menu of six options, which is a decision rather than an offer.
The calendar link is the highest value of these for most service businesses, because it converts the people who are ready now and would otherwise have waited for your email, which is a category that is larger than most businesses expect.
The referral moment
There is a small, reliable win that almost nobody takes. Somebody who has just enquired has an above-average chance of knowing somebody else with the same problem, and they are in the most favourable frame of mind they will be in all year.
A single line asking them to pass you on, with something easy to pass on, converts at a low but non-zero rate for no cost. Low but non-zero on a page every customer sees adds up over a year.
This works best when it is not a scheme. Asking somebody to share a link because it might help a friend reads well. Offering them twenty pounds on the confirmation page of an enquiry they have not yet had answered reads as premature, because it is.
Confirm by email as well
The page disappears when the tab closes. An email does not, and a confirmation email is the thing people search for three days later when they want to check what they said.
It should repeat the timescale, repeat what happens next, and include what they submitted. That last part matters more than it seems. People forget which of three companies they contacted and what they asked for, and a copy of their own answers resolves it instantly.
It is also where the reply-to address should be a real one. A confirmation from a no-reply address at the exact moment somebody might want to add a detail is a small, entirely avoidable obstruction.
Different answers for different paths
If your form branches, the confirmation should too, and this is one of the cheapest uses of conditional logic available.
An urgent repair enquiry needs a different page from an annual service enquiry. One wants a phone number and a realistic timescale for today. The other wants reassurance and can afford to offer something to read. Showing both the same page means one of them is being handled wrongly.
It requires no integration and no extra system. It is the same logic you already used to decide which questions to show, applied to the last screen instead of the middle ones.
The tracking question
The confirmation page is where most sites record that a conversion happened, which is reasonable and worth getting right for a practical reason rather than an analytical one.
If your confirmation appears in place of the form without the page changing, many analytics setups will not register it, and you will be under-counting conversions without knowing. This is common enough that it is worth checking specifically rather than assuming the numbers are right.
The related trap is counting a page view as a conversion when somebody can reach that page without submitting anything. If the confirmation has its own address that anybody could visit, your conversion count includes accidents and bookmarks.
What not to put there
A few things actively cost you at this moment, and they appear regularly because each seemed sensible in isolation.
- A survey about the form they have just filled in, which is a second form at the moment they thought they had finished.
- A newsletter sign-up presented as if it were part of the submission, which is both annoying and, if it looks like consent was implied, a problem.
- A discount code for something unrelated, which reframes a service enquiry as a shopping trip.
- Six links to other pages, which is a menu rather than a next step.
- An immediate redirect to the homepage, which is the worst option and is still surprisingly common.
The internal side of the same moment
The confirmation page sets a promise, and the promise is only worth anything if the notification that reaches you is good enough to act on.
This is where many businesses undermine their own page. The page says one working day, and the notification arrives in a shared inbox that three people half-watch, formatted as a wall of labels and values that takes a minute to read. The promise then depends on somebody being diligent.
If you are going to make a specific commitment, make the internal half work first. A readable notification, going somewhere with an owner, is what turns the sentence on the page from marketing into a description.
The page you see if it went wrong
Almost nobody designs the failure case, and it happens more than people think. A payment declines, a file is too large, a network drops halfway through, or a required field on a hidden branch blocks the submission.
What the person sees at that moment determines whether they try again or leave. A generic something went wrong, with the form cleared, is close to a guarantee that they leave. A message that says what failed, keeps everything they typed, and offers an alternative such as an email address, recovers a substantial share of them.
It is worth deliberately breaking your own form once to see what happens. Submit it with a deliberately invalid card, or an oversized file, and look at the result as a customer would. Most people have never seen their own failure page and are surprised by it.
Timing the follow-up around it
The confirmation page sets an expectation, and the first email after it either confirms or undermines that expectation. There is a specific pattern that works and one that does not.
What works is an immediate confirmation, automated, saying exactly what the page said, followed by a real reply from a person within the promised window. Two messages with different jobs. What does not work is a single automated message dressed up to look personal, which people detect immediately and which makes the real reply, when it comes, feel like the second attempt.
If the promised window is longer than a day, an interim note helps more than it costs. We have this, our surveyor is out until Thursday, you will hear from her on Friday. That is thirty seconds of somebody's time and it prevents most of the chasing emails a longer window otherwise generates.
The same page for returning customers
One refinement worth knowing about for businesses with repeat custom. The confirmation page is usually written for somebody who has never dealt with you before, which means existing customers get an introduction they do not need.
If the form can tell, or if you ask, the page for a returning customer can skip the explanation and go straight to the specifics. You know the drill, we will be in touch by Tuesday, and here is the direct number for your account manager. That reads as recognition rather than as a script.
This is a small thing and it sits in the category of details that make a business feel like it knows who it is talking to, which is one of the few advantages a small company has over a large one and which is usually squandered by using the same default page for everybody.
Rewriting yours
This is a twenty minute job and it is worth doing properly rather than adding a sentence to what is there.
Write the timescale you will actually hit. Write the next two things that will happen, in order. Add one thing they can do now, ideally a way to book if that applies to your business. Check the confirmation email says the same things and includes their answers. If the form branches, write a second version for the other main path.
Then read it as somebody who has just spent three minutes filling in a form and wants to know whether that was a good idea. If the page answers that, it is doing its job, which is more than the default has ever done.