Did you notice? If you pay attention when shopping online, you will rarely see a detailed overview of your order after finalizing it.
You might think that I’m exaggerating (at first, I thought so too), but the recent online shopping spree I went on proved this point entirely.
It turns out that many online retailers miss out on order confirmation, or just massively underuse the opportunity it provides.
At best, there is a note saying “thanks for the order”, maybe some frequently asked questions, and a few social sharing buttons allowing customers to brag about their purchase to social media followers.
What if the customer made a mistake when filling in the address form, or chose the wrong parcel locker? Such mistakes can cost both online retailers and carriers some serious money (and frustrate the customer in the process).
In fact, most missed delivery attempts are caused by address mistakes, and there’s research to back it up. According to the Fixing Failed Deliveries study from Loqate, when addresses are inaccurate or incomplete, 41% of deliveries are delayed and 39% simply fail.
Thanks for the money, bye now
There’s no denying that order fulfillment failure can be costly, and fixing the issue as early as possible is in everyone’s interest.
Instead of just thanking your customers for the order, why not show them a detailed receipt with ordered products, address information, payment method, and chosen delivery option?
This way, you can help your customers double-check all the information once more, and offer the possibility to introduce last-minute changes to delivery instructions before the order is processed further.
Yet, that’s hardly ever the case.
Why is an e-commerce order confirmation page important?
It’s difficult to argue that converting customers is the primary goal for any e-commerce business. Yet, customer expectations, along with the importance of after-sales care, are steadily growing.
The thing is: The confirmation page is potentially one of the checkout touchpoints you can easily improve for a better shopping experience. In many cases, it comes down to actually…having the “order complete” page at all.
So, instead of showing generic thank you messages, it’s time to use your order confirmation page to the fullest. Here’s how.
Order confirmation design: Best practices
- Confirm the payment
- Sum up the ordered items
- Mention the address details and estimated delivery time
- Ask for feedback
- Recommend other items
- Encourage the next purchase
- Enable account creation
- Provide contact information
Confirm the payment
When designing a proper order complete page, the least you can do is confirm that the payment actually went through.
It sounds obvious — after all, showing a confirmation is the main reason why such pages exist. But, sometimes there’s just no reassurance at all. Or, the message is pretty vague (or shown quickly before redirecting the shopper elsewhere).
The lack of the order complete page actually forces customers to rely on getting an order confirmation email instead, which usually takes some time to reach the inbox anyway. When buying online, not sure if building up suspense is really necessary.
Sum up the ordered items
Another way to boost reassurance is simply summing up the order, allowing your customers to check whether they bought everything they wanted. Yet again, it seems logical but doesn’t happen too often.
What’s even better at this point is providing the option to still add new items to the same order (and offer split delivery, for example).
This can make things easier for those shoppers who just realized they forgot to buy something they needed or those who just want to add more items last minute. Why not?
When that happens, it’s much easier to “continue shopping” instead of going through the checkout process and filling out all the forms once more.
Mention the address details and estimated delivery time
This part of the order confirmation page with delivery details is probably the most important one for customers. When you think about it, it serves at least a few important purposes:
- Reminding what delivery option they chose (and whether they selected the right parcel locker or pickup point, for example)
- Letting them double-check the address information
- Stating the estimated delivery time so they know when to expect the parcel
As already mentioned, most missed delivery attempts are caused by address mistakes, and fixing even the smallest errors after the order is processed tends to be costly and complicated.
The fewer address mistakes, the better. Let your customers spot & fix the incorrect details before the order is processed further.
To feature all the delivery information (and more), you can also integrate the Ingrid Receipt into your “thank you” page. The widget gives your customers full transparency and enables them to double-check the order at the very beginning of the post-purchase journey.
The contents of the cart, prices (including discounts), recipient's address, and chosen delivery option can all be shown in detail and serve as an order confirmation. This means no more blank pages, or abbreviations and generic names that only confuse customers.
Book a demo to see Ingrid Receipt for yourself.
Ask for feedback
While the checkout process is not the best place to distract potential customers from making the purchase, the order confirmation page is where you can actually ask for some information and get feedback about their shopping experience.
It might not seem like much, but surveying customers is a great way to assess their overall satisfaction with your store and keep optimizing the checkout process. It also shows that you care about their experience — especially if you act upon the received feedback.
The worst that can happen is they will just ignore the survey. No hard feelings!
Recommend other items
Don’t get me wrong — cross-selling is great, but “interrupting” the checkout process with recommended products popping out on a screen every five minutes or so can easily annoy your customers and make them abandon the cart eventually.
It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do any cross-selling, though. Similarly to feedback surveys, you can choose to move your cross-sell offers to the “receipt” page instead.
(Especially if you can allow customers to still add items to their order after the purchase, without the need to fill in all the checkout forms again.)
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No matter where you choose to display your cross-sell deals, choose them wisely. Think complementary items, not necessarily similar ones.
If I just bought a sofa, I’m not really looking for another one to buy right now. But, I might be tempted to add a nice coffee table to the order.
Encourage the next purchase
Even though seamless shopping & delivery experiences are the main drivers of customer loyalty and repeated purchases, it doesn’t hurt to incentivize the next purchase.
Featuring discount codes or special deals on your order confirmation page (later followed up by a confirmation email) is the easiest way to do so.
If you’re not convinced to give them out “for free”, you can simply offer such perks in exchange for joining the loyalty program or creating an account in your store.
That brings us to the next point…
Enable account creation
Once again, anything that gets in the way of purchase — such as forced account creation during the checkout process — can easily lead to cart abandonment.
Nobody likes to be forced to do anything, plus plenty of online shoppers just despise keeping numerous accounts (myself included).
Especially the accounts that come with numerous emails after being created.
According to Eloise Tobler, E-commerce Supervisor at Wisetek Store, it’s normal to try to expand your database and encourage repeat shoppers, but you may be doing this at the expense of huge numbers of one-time shoppers.
— Plus, if you sell larger, top-shelf items like laptops, Macbooks, and computers like we do, your customers are not buying new ones every month; they’re more of a once every 2-3 years (if not longer) purchase, she says. Make it easy for people to purchase your product, you can always reach out again afterward.
However, moving the account creation form to the order confirmation page makes it far less annoying. When it’s optional, only those shoppers who are truly interested in “keeping in touch” will sign up.
If you want to encourage the signups, though, don’t forget to offer something in exchange. As already mentioned, offering discounts is a pretty effective way to convince online shoppers.
You can also experiment with listing other benefits, such as a faster checkout process when logged in to an account.
Provide contact information
Technically, if you offer order tracking details right from the beginning, the chances of getting a lot of inbound support issues are pretty low.
Still, your e-commerce business needs experienced support reps to handle unexpected issues, like fixing address mistakes (if it’s not possible for your customers to do it themselves), or handling delivery delays.
In such cases, it really helps to highlight the contact information of your support team, making it easy for customers to reach out if needed. You can also embed a contact form or FAQ section to address common issues before they arise.
Order confirmation template
Uf, that's quite a lot to process. To make things easier and implement a more detailed "thank you" page, here's an order confirmation template that summarizes all the tips and examples mentioned so far:
✓ Thank you message
Say thanks, confirm the payment, provide the order ID and mention that the order confirmation email has been sent.
✓ Delivery details
Include the delivery option, address information, and estimated delivery time.
✓ Order summary
Sum up the ordered items (name of the product, quantity, color, size, price, shipping charges, taxes, discounts).
✓ Feedback survey
Ask for feedback on the shopping experience so far.
✓ Account creation form (+ incentive)
Encourage customers to create an account for future purchases. Give something in exchange—mention the benefits and offer a discount, for example.
✓ Recommended products
Show complementary products or services.
✓ Customer support information
Add customer support contact details to reach out in case of any issues.
Ready to design your order confirmation page? Use the template above or embed Ingrid Receipt to easily show relevant information. Book a demo to find out more.
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