Error 404 – Page not Found…This error message is very familiar to almost all internet users. When people see this error message, they feel annoyed, irritated, frustrated or disappointed. Most of them will likely leave the site and start their search over again. If you own the error page that these visitors have landed on, you may have just lost a valuable customer. So how would you prevent such losses from happening again? You need to optimize your 404 page.
Basically, a 404 page informs the visitors that the server cannot locate the file that they are looking for. This happens when Internet users type in the wrong URL or use a broken hyperlink. For example, if you are looking for “mywebsite.com/contact-us/” and instead you have typed in “mywebsite.com/contact/”, an error page will be shown to you explaining that the server cannot find the page you are looking for.
As stated earlier, when Internet users encounter a 404 page, they tend to walk away. There is very little chance of these visitors coming back to your site. Apart from fixing broken links within your own site, there is little you can do to stop the error page being displayed. So you must try to makethe error page not so off putting. You will need to customize your 404 page so that it will look very different to regular error pages, and more like a regular page of your website.
Most error pages have a white background and black text. Oftentimes, there are no explanations about how you got there or how you will get back to where you were before. As a site owner the first thing that you need to do is to design your error page to look like the rest of your website. Use the same theme, layout and color palette on your 404 page. The offer some explanation on the 404 error page regarding the situation that they are in. So that they will not hurriedly leave your site, provide some suggestions. You may wish to install a search box on the page so that they could continue their search. By providing a link to your home page or sitemap, you can also offer them alternative ways to find the content they are after.
If you need assistance on how to optimize your 404 page contact us. Also check out our other affordable wordpress services.
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