Two different people usually end up looking for this. One is an owner who noticed that, after someone sends the contact form, all that happens is a small line of green text above the form, easy to miss on a phone, and wonders whether visitors even realise it worked. The other has been told that counting enquiries in Google Analytics is easier with a thank-you page after form submission, and wants to know how to set one up.
Both lead to the same job: decide between an on-page message and a separate page, build the page properly, point the form at it, and keep it out of search results. Here is each part, with the settings in the common form plugins.
Confirmation message or redirect?
Every form plugin can show a confirmation message in place of the form. Most can also send the visitor to another page instead. Neither is wrong.
| On-page message | Separate thank-you page | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Nothing to build; just edit the text | One page to create and look after |
| Room to say things | A sentence or two | As much as you need, with links and contact details |
| Visibility | Can be missed if it appears off-screen | Impossible to miss |
| Tracking in analytics | Possible, but needs extra setup | Simple, because the page has its own address |
| Risk | Low | People can reach the page without submitting anything |
For a simple contact form on a site where you do not track enquiries, a clear message is fine. If you want to count enquiries, or you have something genuinely useful to tell people after they submit, use a page.
What to put on the thank-you page
The visitor has just done what you asked. The page should reassure them and tell them what happens next, nothing more complicated than that.
- A clear confirmation in the heading, such as “Thanks, we have your enquiry”.
- What happens next, described honestly. “We read every enquiry and will reply by email or phone” is better than a promise of a reply within a set time you may not always meet.
- What to do if it is urgent, with your phone number written out in full, plus WhatsApp if you use it for customers.
- A note about the confirmation email, if your form sends one, and a suggestion to check spam if it does not arrive. The wording of that email is covered in writing a form auto-reply.
- One or two helpful links, such as a page answering common questions or your service area. Not a wall of offers.
Leave out a second form, a newsletter popup and anything that makes the visitor wonder whether they need to do more. If you want to greet people by name, some plugins can pass a field value to the page in its web address. Pass a first name at most. Never put an email address or phone number in the address, because page addresses are recorded in analytics reports and server logs.
Creating the page
- Go to Pages → Add New Page (just Add New in older versions) and give the page a title such as “Thank you”.
- Set a short, clear slug, for example thank-you or enquiry-received. If you have several forms you want to track separately, make one page per form, such as thank-you-quote.
- Write the content using the list above.
- Pick a template that shows your normal header and footer, so the visitor can carry on browsing.
- Publish it. A draft or private page will show a “not found” error to visitors when the form redirects there.
- Do not add it to your menus.
The general steps for a new page, including templates and slugs, are in our post on creating a page in WordPress.
Sending visitors to a thank-you page after form submission
WPForms
Open the form, go to Settings → Confirmations, and change the confirmation type from Message to Show Page (choose a page on your site) or Go to URL (Redirect) (enter any address). Save the form.
Gravity Forms
Open the form’s Settings → Confirmations, edit the default confirmation, and choose Page or Redirect instead of Text.
Fluent Forms and others
Fluent Forms, Formidable Forms and Ninja Forms offer a similar choice in their confirmation or submission settings: show a message, go to a page, or go to a custom address. The labels vary, so look for the setting that controls what happens after submission.
Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 has no redirect setting. It fires a browser event called wpcf7mailsent when a message has been sent successfully, and a short script listening for that event can send the visitor to your page. You can add the script with a plugin such as Code Snippets, or use a small add-on plugin made for Contact Form 7 redirects. Old instructions using an “on_sent_ok” setting no longer apply, as that option was removed.
Whichever plugin you use, submit the form yourself afterwards and make sure you land on the right page.
Keep the page out of search results
A thank-you page has nothing to offer someone arriving from Google, and visitors who land on it directly will also inflate your enquiry count. Set it to noindex in your SEO plugin’s settings for that page. Rank Math and Yoast SEO both have this in the page’s advanced SEO options, and both usually leave noindexed pages out of their sitemaps. The details are in our post on hiding a page from Google.
Do not block the page in robots.txt as well. If search engines are not allowed to fetch the page, they cannot see the noindex instruction on it.
Counting enquiries with the page
Once the form redirects reliably, each view of the page represents a submitted form, which is why this method is popular for tracking. Setting it up in Google Analytics is covered step by step in GA4 conversion tracking for small business websites, so it is not repeated here. Two habits keep the numbers honest: one page per form you want to count separately, and remembering that your own test submissions are counted too.
When something goes wrong
- The redirect lands on a “not found” page. The page is unpublished, or its slug changed after the form was set up. Check the address in the form’s confirmation settings.
- The form shows the old message. The setting was not saved, or a cached copy of the page is being served. Clear your caching plugin and try again.
- The thank-you page appears but no email arrives. The redirect only shows that the form accepted the submission. It says nothing about whether the notification was delivered. To track down where delivery breaks, see fixing a WordPress contact form that is not working.
To undo the change, set the confirmation type back to a message. The page can stay unpublished or be trashed.
This is one of the form tasks in our guide to managing your WordPress site. If you are setting up forms more generally, our WordPress forms guide lists the rest.
Frequently asked questions
Should every form on my site have its own thank-you page?
Only if you want to tell them apart. If you track quote requests and contact enquiries separately, or want to say something different after each, give each form its own page. If all forms lead to the same next step and you count them together, one shared page is simpler to keep up to date.
Why is my thank-you page showing up in Google?
Search engines found a link to it, often through the sitemap or an old menu, and nothing told them not to list it. Set the page to noindex in your SEO plugin, remove it from any menus, and make sure robots.txt does not block it, so search engines can read the noindex instruction and drop it.
Can someone visit the thank-you page without filling in the form?
Yes, anyone with the address can open it. That is harmless for visitors, but it can add false enquiries to your analytics. Noindexing the page, keeping it out of menus and using a less obvious slug reduce it, and comparing analytics against the entries stored by your form plugin shows how close the numbers are.
Does a thank-you page work if my form sits in a popup?
Usually, yes. The redirect closes the popup by loading the thank-you page in the same tab, which is often clearer than a small message squeezed into the popup. Some popup tools expect an on-page message instead, so submit the popup form on a phone and a computer and check where you end up.
A redirect that lands in the wrong place is easy to miss, because owners rarely submit their own forms. Our WordPress support can set up thank-you pages and tracking together and check where each form sends people.
Next in this series: How to Change the WordPress Email From Name
