There are many reasons why a visitor may find their way to your 404 error page–a site redesign may result in broken or outdated links, your web designer may have misspelled your URLs or a visitor could simply have mistyped a web address.  The thing is, your 404 page is often one of the pages with the highest traffic on the site! 

With so many visitors reaching your site on an error page, it’s easy to understand why they might think the site is broken or become frustrated and bounce right off the site without ever trying to find what they need.  You can remedy this situation easily and also use it as an opportunity to optimize another page on your site for the search engines! 

 Here’s how!

•  Change the error text on the page from the dull and uninviting statement ‘The page you are looking for cannot be found’ to something more human and inviting.  Welcome them with something more along the lines of ‘We’re sorry! We can’t find the page you are looking for’. 
• Add useful links or attractive buttons to help your visitors navigate to popular areas of the site.  For example, check out this truly engaging and useful 404 error message.  This site offers links to explore, friendly suggestions on how to find the item in question and the best part: a verbal smile!  The site welcomes the visitor and walks them through with ease.
• Search eninge optimize your error page with keywords and phrases.  This is a great opportunity to choose your page content carefully and include important keywords for additional exporsure.

Giving your visitors attractive and helpful assitance on the 404 page can definitely increase page views and decrease bounce rates.  Give it a shot!

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Driving Traffic, General, Usability & Conversions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.