Form Success Message: Best Practices and Examples

Form Success Message Best Practices and Examples

Give each form its own success message

It doesn’t matter what kind of website you have, if you do not have forms that let people contact you, you are not making the most of your website. I would go so far as to suggest that every page on your website ought to have some kind of form. And once visitors complete and submit their form there MUST be a success message.

Saying thank you is not always enough

Here are four examples of simple success messages:

Thank you!

Your message has been successfully sent. We will contact you very soon!

Thank you for contacting us.

You are very important to us, all information received will always remain confidential. We will contact you as soon as we review your message.

Thanks!

We appreciate that you’ve taken the time to write us. We’ll get back to you very soon. Please come back and see us often.

Thank you for contacting us.

We have received your enquiry and will respond to you within 24 hours. For urgent enquiries please call us on one of the telephone numbers below.

These thank you messages are not very inspiring at all. The reason is that they don’t give a specific answer, they are vague. Very soon when? Why should I come back and see you often? You will respond within 24 hours with what?

Give instructions to ensure proper completion

Success messages can go further. Good messages don’t just end the form submittal process: they help the user make sure that the form was completed correctly. Here are a few examples:

Thank you for contacting us

We have sent a verification email to the address you used when you filled in the form.

You haven’t received your verification email? Let us give you a hand!

Follow these simple steps:

Is the email you used “[email protected]” correct? Are you checking the right email account.?
Check your email spam folder for your confirmation email. It can lose its way to your inbox and wind up trapped in there!
Keep in mind, it can take a while, even a few hours for you to receive your email confirmation. We ask you to be patient for at least two hours
You can try to fill in the form once again, remember to make sure your email address is correct.
After following these steps, if you still have not received a confirmation email or if the confirmation link that your received is not working you can let us know by sendig us an email at the following address. We’ll be happy to help you out!

Thank you for your request!

Your Service Request Form will be reviewed shortly and a response made to the email address or phone number given. Please check your email, and open the email from [email protected] titled “Re: Your Service Request Form.” If you do not see the email in a few minutes, check your “junk mail” folder or “spam” folder. We make every effort to ensure that these emails are delivered. If you do not see the email in your inbox, please check your junk mail folder and add “[email protected]” to your White List or Safe Sender List. If you do not receive a confirmation email try submitting the form again. If you still don’t receive an email, then write to [email protected] explaining the problem. We will do our best to answer your request as soon as possible.

Use the input data in the the success message

Using the input data directly lets the person see in real time if the form was filled in correctly. This is a feature available in many form building plugins. WordPress Contact Forms has a token system just for this purpose:

Thank You {Name} {Email}

Your message was sent to our Support Team. You should receive a reply from a representative of our web site by the end of the next business day by email at {Email}. Occasionally we receive a very large number of messages, and your response may take a little longer. If this occurs, we appreciate your patience, and we assure you that you will receive a response. Thank you for taking the time to contact us. Have a great day, Ourwebsite.com Support Team

Tell visitors where to go next

Thanks for contacting us.

This email is checked regularly during business hours (9-5 EST). We’ll get back to you as soon as possible, usually within a few hours. Either John or Jay will respond to your email.

Until then, make sure to check out the following resources:

Frequently Asked Questions: www.ourwebsite.com/faqs/and

Try searching for your problem: www.ourwebsite.com/search/

Also check the Tutorials page: www.ourwebsite.com/tutorials/

Give visitors something special

You can decide to give something right away:

Thank you for filling in the form.

Click here to Download the file you have requested.

But it is better to send a link in the email notification as it ensures that the visitor will give you a working email address:

Thank you for filling in the form.

We have sent you an email with a link to the coupon requested.

Or maybe give certain results within the thank you page.

Test completed. You scored 5 out of 6

Other important notes for form success messages

Here are a few other considerations:

No Thank You or Form Success Message means inflexibility and user confusion at best.
All of the success message approaches above can be mixed and matched to better suit the form you have built.
It is advisable that the message appear on the same page as the form. If you redirect to thank you pages make sure that the page is not accessible other than when a form has been filled in. This is a much overlooked detail as many thank you pages appear on SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages). Let me repeat: thank you messages should not be indexed in goolge or accessible by visitors who have not filled in the form.
Email verification when the user is filling in a form is great but it is not always enough. Sending a message to the email helps make sure that the user receives confirmation that he filled in a form but it is not enough. The surest way is to ask for email address in the email he receives. sort of like doble opt in. in the thank you page remind him of the email he used so he gets another chance to check the spelling of the email

WordPress Contact Forms and many other contact form plugins give you the choice to be creative with your thank you messages.