Sending visitors to a thank-you page after the form

After a successful submission a form can either show a short message in place of the form, or send the visitor to a page of its own. A thank-you page is worth it when you want to say more — what happens next, opening hours, links — or when you measure conversions by page visits.

Message or page?

An inline message is quick and keeps the visitor where they were. Good for a simple contact form in a sidebar or footer.
A thank-you page gives room for next steps and can be tracked as a goal in analytics without any extra code.

Keep the redirect on your own site

A form that redirects to any address typed into its settings — or worse, passed in the request — can be abused to send visitors to another site with your domain in the link. Choosing a page from your own site, rather than typing a URL, avoids that entirely.

Setting it up in Mailbag

Each Mailbag form has a confirmation setting: show the message, or go to a page. The message is “Thank you. Your message has been received.” by default and can be rewritten per form. To use a page instead, create it in WordPress first, then pick it in the form's settings; Mailbag only offers pages on your own site.

The redirect happens after the entry is saved, so the thank-you page is never shown for a message that wasn't stored. It works the same with or without JavaScript: without it, the form posts to the page and the server sends the browser on.

What to put on the page

A plain confirmation that the message arrived.
When and how you'll answer — by email, by phone, within a working day.
What to do if it's urgent.
Nothing that repeats what the visitor typed: the page URL is shared, cached and bookmarked, and personal details don't belong in it.

If you'd like the visitor to have a copy of their message, use an automatic reply instead.

Mailbag Contact Form is a free contact form that saves every entry before it sends anything, and shows you what happened to each email.

See what it does