HTML.co.uk

Once you have finished with the creation of your web site, the next important thing that should be considered is creating page not found, an error page or as commonly known as 404 page. This page is useful both for you and the reader as it will help you get more out of the website. These important tips will help in creating better 404 pages.

• 404 page should never be redirected to the home page: It is a common irresistible practice followed by almost all the websites to just have a plain error page not found error. Redirecting to the home page groups both with the programs and the scripts that make use of the 404 HTTP code for displaying information, such as link checkers and the search engines. But this can actually confuse your readers to a great extent. For example if you click on a link which should actually direct you to some specific article but due to error it takes you to the home page.

• Do not presume that your writers are aware what they have been looking for: It is quite possible that the reader would have just clicked on some link on the other website and is just not aware about the layout of your website. You can always put a search box on your 404 HTTP error page and also give the option of including other links and information. In fact it would be a real great idea to make this page fairly link heavy. But don’t forget to keep them clearly categorized so that your customers are able to locate what they have been looking for.

• Don’t try to guess why they got the back link: You can always put in the messages like we just happen to recognise our website on your 404 page. This will immediately make the page outdated. If they get the message that they happen to reach that page just because of mistyping the URL, might seem quite strange.

• Give suggestions on what can be done by the reader so as to find the missing page: This is done quite well by the 404 error page of eBay. The main idea behind this is providing alternative ways for getting to the information which could be either by doing a search or navigating to the web page form the directory or simply by checking the URL for obvious typos. Finally, don’t forget to remind your customers that there could be a possibility of your page simply getting lost.

• Keep your site navigation on the 404 page: The experience of clicking on the link and finally arriving at a white page which has written in huge letters, page not found, is quite disconcerting. Instead if you put the standard site navigation on that 404 error page, it can atleast by the customers for navigation purposes for finding the pages that they want.

• Script your 404 page if possible: The best 404 pages would be the ones which consider all the information that is available and based on that provide to its customers a customized response. The information that can be used includes:
1. The URL that was not found
2. The area of the site the customer would be in or came from
3. The referring page

• Include a report form to report the error: It is very important that you provide an easy method of reporting bad links to you. The best option would be to include a form on 404 page that would include the URL of the referring page, the URL page that you did not find and any other details you would want to collect. This would help in providing all the necessary information about the bad links.

Try to make good use of your 404 pages, don’t just abuse them.