Transform Errors Into Opportunities With Your 404 Page
Turn errors into opportunities with well crafted 404 pages.
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Turn errors into opportunities with well crafted 404 pages.
Perhaps you’re doing some marketing research or researching a tool and you’re several clicks deep when like a jack in the box, up pops a “404 Error, Sorry Page Cannot Be Found”.
The link you just clicked on is dead and gone.
In most instances a user is signposted to return to the homepage, or forced to hit the back button to return the page they were previously on. They might even open a new tab and search for the relevant link or info they were trying to find, potentially leaving the website altogether.
You’ve likely invested time or money in getting traffic to your website. Allowing them to leave disappointed wastes that investment and is a loss of an opportunity. So the question is, how can we get them to stay? How can we transform errors into opportunities?
Firstly, 404 is not a user friendly term for an error. It’s web lingo that is confusing like many of the other HTTP status and error codes.
A 404 error is one that occurs when a page or file can simply be not be found. Whether it has been removed, deleted or never actually existed.
404 errors can happen not just on your website, but for links to other websites that your website points to. Any broken link would usually display a 404 page. SEOs are usually hot on this and discover and resolve any broken links, as it can have a negative effect for user experience.
Using a broken link checker can determine if there are any broken links on your website. Both those that are broken directly i.e. pages or documents on your website, and those you link out to.
Vikki at Impact uses a combination of Google Search Console, Screaming Frog and SEMrush to run checks for broken links. You can use other free tools such as AHREFS Broken Link Checker.
The image below is from AHREFS, and it shows Vikki is on the ball with resolving broken links. Well done Vik 🙂
If you’ve discovered broken links on your website, ensure that the page URL or media are still valid or remove the link if it is no longer needed.
Redirecting the link if it needs to go somewhere else can be done with a 301 redirect (more lingo). But here’s a guide on 301 redirects and how to use them.
Just because you’ve fixed the broken links, it doesn’t mean that more won’t occur. Or that no one will ever get lost on your website. It happens.
Maybe a URL was mistyped by your team or another person sharing a page. It’s easily done.
So having a page is one thing, but turning it into an opportunity is another.
Many brands don’t heavily focus on creating engaging 404 pages. Maybe their teams are so hot on content and broken links they know nobody is going to mess up.
ASOS have a straight forward 404 page that simply provides a way of signposting the user back to the homepage.
The BBC’s allows you to return to the previous page. Handy, if like in our example above you were several clicks deep.
Rightmove’s example provides prompts to navigate to ‘search for a property’ and ‘sign in to your account’. These are likely the most common tasks users complete on the website.
Whilst doing some research on this post, I actually found it difficult to get to the ASOS 404 page. Most of the mistyped URLs I was attempting were directing me back to the homepage. This is another tactic if you want to avoid a 404 page. But it can leave the user feeling confused as to why they are back on the homepage.
With no communication or message that something went wrong you risk confusing your users.
So whilst you can clean up errors, it doesn’t solve the issue if your user found something that wasn’t intended.
Introducing a few items to help them continue their journey will improve the overall 404 user experience and try and turn an error into an opportunity.
Here are some further examples, with a mix of informative, fun and on brand pages.
Amazon have some fun with their 404 page. It features a photo of a dog and directs the user to meet the dogs of Amazon, which takes you to a news article.
Lego deliver an on brand experience by saying ‘everything is still awesome’ with a photo of the chosen one Emmet. However, they use 404 in the copy which might confuse some people.
Anglian Water deliver a nice water focused illustrative look which is on brand. They also provide a search box as well as a return to previous page option.
Finally, Digg deliver a quirky news themed message, whilst also providing hot links to core pages on the website.
The opportunity is looking at how can you improve the experience for your users, if they encounter a 404 error on your website?
Do you even have a 404 page in place, as some brands pay forget to implement one? If you do have one, what changes can be made to encourage users discovering dead ends, to continue browsing core content or to make a purchase.
Follow as many as the steps above. But also ensure that users are not discovering a 404 too often by minimising broken links on your website.
That’s a wrap for Swipe & Deploy #49. Join me next week when I’ll share another insight or piece of inspiration from around the web.
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