Creating a Confirmation Page

If your form handler allows it, you can create a simple confirmation page for your form. A confirmation page is a Web page that appears after visitors submit a form. This page lets visitors know that the form submission was successful and (depending on the capabilities of your form handler and how you set up the page) confirms the information that visitors entered in the form. A confirmation page is a nice way to reassure visitors that the information they just sent didn't float off into the ether after they clicked the Submit button.

Create a confirmation page just as you create any other Web page. We suggest that you use design elements from other Web pages so that it blends in nicely with the rest of your site's design. (If you submit your form to a custom script, the script's programming determines whether it can work in conjunction with a confirmation page. Your Web host technical support team or system administrator can fill you in on the script's capabilities.)

The confirmation page can be as simple as a polite acknowledgment and a hyperlink back to the Web site's home page ("Thank you for filling out our survey. Return to the Acme home page."). Some scripts allow you to include some of the information the visitor entered in the form on the confirmation page. Check the capabilities of the script you're using to find out how to create and use this type of confirmation page.

Tip 

If you use a Dynamic Web Template to unify the design of your site (covered in Chapter 11), consider hooking it to your confirmation page.