Don’t just give them a default 404 page (Day 20-31 Kick Butt)

For day 20 of 31-Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt, I want to spend some more time on your reader’s experience on your blog. And just one more way to get them to dig deeper and keep them on our blog.

How many times have you put in the wrong information in the address bar for a blog and been forwarded to their standard 404 page? It happens too often. However, what happens too often is you get one of those default 404 pages that serve no purpose whatsoever. Worse, your readers get to those default 404 pages and don’t bother to see what you have. Nor do they even attempt to dig deeper into the blog at all. You are missing out on a chance to engage your reader and give them something useful. Even if it is only your 404 page.

Today’s Lesson

What some of us don’t remember is the 404 Page may actually be one of the first things one of our new visitors may see. For that reason alone, we should make it useful and attractive at the same time.

Here are some things you can do to make your 404 error page more useful for both your readers and you.

Give them a search option

Give your visitors the option to actually search your site for what they might be looking for. All you need to do is add a simple search feature for this. And put it at the top of your 404 page.

Give them a way to contact you

If they can’t find what they are looking for, give them a way to contact you to ask for help. Why not start building a relationship with your visitors now? You may just turn them into regular readers and someday a new client or customer if you do.

Give them some useful links to go to

One thing we do on our 404 Page is to give our visitors links to a popular series we are doing. We also give them some useful blogging tips. Get them going in the right direction and visiting your blog post right from the 404 page.

Your Home Work

Don’t overlook this great opportunity to give a good first impression to your visitors. And keep in mind, some of your visitors are going to land on your 404 error page. Even if you think it never happens. If any of you have a customized 404 error page, please share a link to it. By sharing our ideas, we can all make our own 404′s that much better.

Finally, and excuse the self-serving promotion of something I am proud of. If you were using Headway Themes, we have actually built into Headway a way to customize your 404 page without even having to do any custom.css In other words, you can set up your 404 page just as if it was any other page in your blog.

Robert Fay

Grant,
I have the same WP question as Donna, for the same reason, and so to extend my non-tech savvy exposure level, how do I "access that via the server side of things" to check?

Thanks for your patience.

Great link, Constance.

Oh, and also, under "Give them some useful links to go to", your "our 404 Page" link does not work -- or is that the point.

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Grant Griffiths

Ah, but my 404 page does work as you get a page with a search box and some links to some of our selected post. Try this link http://www.blogforprofit.com/123124 You will see what I am talking about.

As for server side of things, do you have access to your server or just to your WordPress Dashboard?

Donna Seyle

So this is going to show how really tech unskilled I am. How do I get to my 404 page in WP?

Depending on your theme, but I would start in your Dashboard to see if it is in Pages. If it is not, you will have to access it via the server side of things.