- Web Design, SEO, Coding, Hosting and Misc Rants Creating User Friendly 404 Pages
It’s inevitable. At some point some of your users will see a 404 error page when the page they tried to view no longer exists.
While a 404 is annoying, Not ideal and should be avoided, There are steps you can take to make it as painless for your users as possible.
A 4 0 what?!?
Most Internet users don’t know, Or care, What a 404 error is. As far as they are concerned it’s just their stupid computer going wrong again. So don’t use the term “404 error”. Explain to them, In plain English, that the page no longer exists.
Try to find it
If you use “search engine friendly URLs” you may be able to parser the URL they requested and use it to do a search and display relevant results.
Latest blog posts
If you have a blog or forum on your site display the latest posts on your 404 error page.
Offer a search box
Display a search box on your site so that the user can look for the information they want on your site.
The idea with these tips is to keep the visitor on your site, Even if they haven’t initially found what they wanted. Maybe Google can get away with having a useless 404 error page, But most of us can’t.
Written by stOx on March 22nd, 2007 with
1 comment.
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#1. May 19th, 2007, at 2:11 PM.
A nice document.I will use a google search and also get money but adsense for search.After this, i can use a latest 5 blog post on it.
It is too easy but very usefull.I immediatelly do it.Thanks for idea.