Order Confirmation Page Best Practices: Turn the Receipt Into Revenue
The order confirmation page is the last on-site screen in nearly every completed order, and most stores waste it. What it must include, and how to turn it into a second sale.
Most stores spend weeks on the product page and the checkout, then hand the buyer a plain receipt and move on. The order confirmation page, the screen a shopper sees the moment they finish checkout, usually does one job: confirm the order went through. That is the floor, not the ceiling. The order confirmation page is the last on-site screen in nearly every completed order, yet in a lot of stores it is the least-used real estate they own. Baymard's checkout research describes this step as one that stores too often treat as a dead end, even though it arrives at a moment of relief and full attention (Baymard). This guide covers what the page has to get right first, then how to turn it into a second sale and a returning customer, on Shopify and WooCommerce, without breaking the reassurance the page exists to give.
What the order confirmation page is, and the job it can't fail
Shopify calls it the thank-you page. WooCommerce calls it the order received page. Whatever the label, it is the screen shown after a shopper submits checkout. Its first responsibility is plain: confirm the order was received and show the details that prove it, making clear whether payment is completed, pending, or still due (Baymard).
That confirmation does more work than it looks. Nielsen Norman Group's research on post-purchase messaging found that a clear confirmation calms anxious buyers and shapes whether they come back to order again (Nielsen Norman Group). Baymard adds a small but telling behavior: shoppers often hesitate to close the page until the confirmation email arrives, so this screen holds their attention longer than almost any other step in the flow. Part of that reassurance is telling the buyer what happens next: when the shipping email will arrive, how to track the order, and where to go if something looks wrong. Setting those expectations up front is what stops the anxious refreshing and the early support ticket.
Get the reassurance right before you ask for anything, because a buyer who is still unsure their order went through will ignore every offer you put in front of them. The receipt comes first. The selling comes after.
See what your checkout and confirmation page leave on the table
What every order confirmation page needs to include
Before any extra, the page has to work as a clear receipt. Baymard's guidance is to always show the , the expected arrival date, and a note that a confirmation email is on its way (Baymard). Klaviyo recommends the same core information for confirmation emails, and most of it belongs on the on-site receipt too (Klaviyo).
Pulled together, a confirmation page that does its job shows:
- The order number, so the buyer can quote it to support
- An order summary with item names, quantities, and photos
- The price breakdown: items, shipping, tax, and total
- The payment method and on file
- The shipping method and an estimated delivery date, with a tracking link when one exists
- A short line on what happens next, including the confirmation email or text
- A clear way to reach support, review the return policy, or edit or cancel the order where supported
The support and returns links are not just courtesy. Klaviyo notes that answering the obvious next questions on the spot, where is my order and how do I return it, cuts the support tickets those questions would otherwise generate. The delivery estimate and tracking link do similar work. One of the first things buyers want to know after ordering is when it will arrive, and answering that on the page settles a common post-purchase worry before it turns into a support email. Get the receipt right, and you have earned the room to ask for more.
How to turn the confirmation page into revenue without breaking the receipt
This is where the extra revenue tends to come from, and where stores either do nothing or overdo it. Baymard's testing points to six post-purchase actions that fit the page without hurting it, and the rule tying them together is placement: put them below and after the order details, never above or instead (Baymard).
The most direct revenue play is a relevant paired with an add-to-order button, so the buyer adds an item without re-entering payment details. That removes the friction that usually kills a second purchase. The same logic that makes express checkout options convert, fewer steps and no re-typing, is what makes a post-purchase add-on work. Keep the suggestion related to what they just bought: a memory card or case for a camera, a refill or bundle for a consumable. The test is whether the add-on would feel helpful to the person who just bought, not whether it pads the order. The same thinking behind cross-selling, upselling, and bundling elsewhere in the store applies here.
Account creation belongs here too. Asking someone to make an account during checkout adds friction; moving it to the confirmation page, as a single password field on top of the email they already gave, sidesteps that (Baymard). It is the cleaner side of the guest checkout versus forced account trade-off: let them buy as a guest, then invite the account once the sale is safe.
The rest are lighter touches that add up over time. A newsletter sign-up has more room here to explain the benefit than it ever does at checkout. Keep it optional and explicit, since the email given for the order is not automatic marketing consent. A one-question survey captures intent at peak attention. Links to setup guides or live order tracking make the buyer feel looked after and quietly lower future tickets. ReConvert, a post-purchase app vendor, reports that adding order tracking gets the page viewed around 2.2 times per order, a vendor figure but a fair reminder that buyers come back to this screen (ReConvert).
A survey, loyalty prompt, or referral offer fits here because the buying experience is still fresh and the buyer is at peak goodwill. Keep these separate from a product review, though. The buyer has not received or used the item yet, so a genuine review has to wait until after delivery. What works on the page is rating the checkout experience, a loyalty or referral invite, or a how-did-you-hear-about-us question. Informational resources do the quieter job of lowering regret: a setup guide, a sizing note, or a what-to-expect timeline makes the buyer feel they chose well, which Baymard links to fewer cancellations (Baymard).
A note on the numbers floating around. Upsell-app vendors publish their own conversion figures for thank-you page offers, so treat them as directional rather than promises. The mechanism holds up even where the exact percentages are marketing. As a related signal, Klaviyo reports that post-purchase emails have the highest open rates of its email campaigns and automations, which it attributes to the attention right after a purchase (Klaviyo).
Find the friction between add-to-cart and repeat purchase
Common order confirmation page mistakes
The mistakes are mostly the flip side of the rules above, and most trace back to one of two impulses: doing nothing with the page, or cramming it full. The biggest one is treating the confirmation as the end of the road, a thank-you line and nothing else (Baymard).
A few more that show up often:
- Pushing the order summary below the fold with an upsell or banner, so the buyer who is still checking their order has to scroll to find it. Confirm first, sell second.
- Stacking too many offers, or pitching something unrelated to what they bought. A small, curated set of relevant offers tends to do more than a wall of them.
- A slow or cramped mobile page. Since buyers often wait here for the confirmation, a slow load or clumsy layout lands at the worst moment. A fast, tappable page with clear wording matters more here than almost anywhere.
How to customize the order confirmation page on Shopify and WooCommerce
The page exists on every platform, but how you change it differs sharply.
On Shopify, there are two screens to know. The thank-you page shows immediately after checkout, and the order status page shows when a customer returns to check on the order later (Shopify). You customize both with Thank you and Order status page checkout extensions, which are app-based and survive theme updates, on every plan except Shopify Starter. Editing the in- such as information, shipping, and payment needs Shopify Plus, and Shopify also has a separate post-purchase extension that can show an offer right after payment, before the thank-you page. The older Additional Scripts and checkout.liquid customizations are being retired: the Shopify Plus deadline passed on August 28, 2025 (with automatic upgrades from January 2026), and stores on other plans have until August 26, 2026. App blocks and UI extensions are now the route. For the in-checkout side of this, our guide to customizing Shopify checkout goes deeper.
On WooCommerce, the same screen is the order received page, at the /checkout/order-received/ URL, and the route depends on your theme. Stores on a block theme can edit it visually with no code: open Appearance, then Editor, then Templates, then Order Confirmation, and rearrange the blocks (WooCommerce). Classic themes and the legacy template still rely on code: the woocommerce_thankyou action hook fires on the page and receives the order ID so you can inject your own content, while the woocommerce_thankyou_order_received_text filter changes the default confirmation line. Keep template overrides in a child theme so an update does not wipe your changes.
Shopify keeps customizations inside app-based extensions with a few plan limits, while WooCommerce offers both visual block editing and full code access. Either way, the same priorities apply: protect the receipt, then add the post-purchase blocks below it, then check the page on a phone the way a real buyer would. Most confirmation pages are built once and never looked at again, which is exactly why a quick review tends to surface easy wins. A broader checkout optimization pass is the natural place to start.
How to measure an order confirmation page
The point of all this is more revenue and more returning buyers, so measure both, not just clicks. A few numbers worth watching:
- Post-purchase offer and incremental revenue per order
- Account creation rate and newsletter or loyalty opt-in rate
- Survey completion rate
- "Where is my order?" support tickets, which should fall as the page answers more up front
- Refund and cancellation rate as a guardrail, so a pushy page does not buy a sale now and a return later
Treat extra clicks and second orders as a hypothesis, not proof, because some of those buyers would have come back anyway. Where your platform allows it, run a holdout group or an so you measure the lift the page actually caused, not the sales it happened to sit next to.
Frequently asked questions
What is an order confirmation page?
The order confirmation page is the screen a shopper sees right after completing checkout. It confirms the order was placed and shows the details: order number, items, total, payment and shipping method, and an estimated delivery date. Shopify calls it the thank-you page; WooCommerce calls it the order received page.
What should an order confirmation page include?
At a minimum: the order number, an order summary with prices, the payment method and shipping address, an estimated delivery date with tracking when available, a note that an email or text confirmation has been sent, and a way to reach support. Baymard recommends always showing the summary, arrival date, and email note (Baymard).
Is the order confirmation page important?
Yes. It reassures the buyer the order went through, which Nielsen Norman Group links to trust and repeat purchases, and it is a high-attention moment you can use for a relevant cross-sell, account creation, or short survey without hurting the experience.
What is the difference between the order confirmation page and the order confirmation email?
The page appears on your site immediately after checkout completes; the email or text confirmation usually arrives shortly afterward and gives the buyer a record to return to. Both should carry the same core order details, and buyers often wait on the page until that confirmation lands.
Jakub is the founder of Ecomhint, an AI-powered ecommerce audit tool focused on UX and conversion optimization. He helps online stores identify friction points across product pages, cart, and checkout using CRO best practices and original research data.
