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Some website owners have the misconception that they can ignore 404 error pages as they are the last place they would want their visitors to end up on their website. However, not designing an interesting 404 page can turn out to be detrimental to your website’s user experience and reflect badly on the search rankings.
Visitors generally see a 404 error page when they click on a non-existing URL. It plainly says either “404 Page Not Found” or “Error 404”. As a visitor, it is a negative and annoying experience.
If the website is yours, you obviously wouldn’t want your visitors to land on a generic error page. Rather, the error page has to show a custom message or something that’s interesting. Why is this important? You can actually use this page as a tool to enhance your website. Let’s understand the reasons why you should make your 404 error pages ‘interesting newsintv.
What Does Your Website’s 404 Error Page Communicate to Visitors?
Does your website’s 404 error page communicate anything that is helpful for your visitors? Consider this page as a landing page, though a page that no visitor actually wants to land on. Also, consider how much work goes into designing an ordinary landing page than a 404 error page.
A 404 page that is designed interestingly can bring about a huge difference to the way in which a visitor experiences a brand. A poorly designed page is a missed opportunity for you as a website owner. So, it is important to use this page to communicate things correctly to the visitors.
Reasons to Make Your 404 Error Pages Interesting
Sometimes, you may think why would anyone ever land on your 404 page? Even though you may think you have developed your website flawlessly, this is a very common thing that happens due to many reasons. Your website’s 404 error page is a chance to convert a negative circumstance into a positive one. If you haven’t already taken advantage of this, you should make the most of this situation and make the page interesting famousbiography.
An interesting 404 error page eradicates the confusion of visitors who wonder why they haven’t landed on the page they were supposed to. It lets them know there’s an error with their request. It could be due to a page being temporarily unavailable, a page that no longer exists, or a mistyped URL.
An interesting page will convey what the error is to the users and take them back to relevant website pages. This gives you a chance to add valuable links to the page and display it to your visitors. Otherwise, you would have lost these users due to a default error page that says nothing. The links that you add could be that of your home page, services page, FAQ page, or any other relevant link. This could keep the users on your site when they could actually have left.
To sum up, an interesting ‘error 404’ page can benefit you in these ways:
- Retain visitors on your website and reduce bounce rate.
- Give them a positive feeling after getting a resolution to the 404 problem.
- Maintain consistent branding all throughout the site jmdhindi.
- Keep them engaged with your website, thus assisting with your sales leads.
How to Make Your 404 Error Page “Interesting”?
Irrespective of how much effort you put in to fix all the errors, visitors may occasionally land on a 404 page for any reason. So, your main goal should be to give your website visitors a pleasant experience rather than an uninteresting and plain ‘Error 404’ page. Here’s how you can make this page as interesting as possible:
- Link the error page to the most popular articles and the main page scooptimes.
- Give your site visitors a way to report broken links.
- Design the page just like your other website pages. The navigation elements should also look the same.
- Politely notify users that the requested page is unavailable.
- The error page may seem useful, but you wouldn’t want it to appear in the search engine results. Ensure that the web server gives back a 404 HTTP status code in case of a request for a missing page. This prevents such pages from getting indexed by search engines.
The dreaded 404 error page has been the bane of webmasters all around the world. However, since it is an unavoidable problem, they should learn to make the best out of such a situation. As a website owner, we hope you would have now understood the importance of an interesting ‘error 404’ page and incorporate ways to customize it.
