|
|
On your site, what do you use as a measure of site performance? How have you been doing lately? Maybe you’ve been enjoying high numbers for a while, or maybe you’ve been getting used to steady KPI growth. How much would your website performance improve if your traffic and/or pageviews grew by another 10-25% percent?
The truth is, your site could potentially do that extra 10-25%, you just don’t benefit from it because your visitors are encountering 404 page not found errors. These visitors can be potential browsers and buyers, but once they hit that 404 page, they’ll leave and bring their money to another site.
How do you keep these people on your site? There are two paths you can take: 1. Optimize your 404 page WITHOUT trying to ID and eliminate the errors from occurring or 2. Optimize your 404 page while attempting to ID and eliminate the 404 errors from occurring on your site.
Option #1: Optimize 404 Page ONLY
This can be done through a great custom 404 page. There are certain guidelines for an awesome 404 page to follow when working on your custom 404 page. Some of these guidelines are:
-
Have links to possible pages that the user could possibly have been looking for.
-
Keep the page copy in a “It’s not your fault” or “We’re going to help you” tone. Unless you’re trying for a comedic edge, don’t make the user feel like they’re wrong or doomed.
-
Give them a way to contact someone directly, to talk about the 404 error they experienced. An email address or phone number would be best.
Option #2: Optimize 404 Page WITH ID & Elimination Process
If you decide that you want to keep more users than an optimized 404 page could keep on its own, then do this option after completing option #1 successfully. Get a system in place to track your 404 errors. Google Analytics has the capability to track your 404 errors. Simply tracking your 404 errors, however, is just the first step. You’ll need a tool that will tell you where the 404 errors are being generated, and then create SEO-friendly 301 redirects to send visitors and search engine robots to a functional page. Tools, like Errorlytics, help identify 404s, the source of the 404s and then gives you the opportunity to create rules to automatically redirect these 404s to the proper working web page. Taking the couple extra steps is a small investment of time, that may have huge returns in preserving and/or improve site performance.
In conclusion, don’t forget about the 404 error page. If you give it the same attention you give your other pages, it will return the love and bring in some visitors that you’ve been missing out on.
Thanks for the information. My safety and security web site definitely doesn’t need to lose customers. I’ll have to get busy implementing these ideas!