Error 404 Not Found Tips & Tricks For Your Website
by Mia Wadsworth(1)DryItchyScalpRemedies
Error 404 not found pages when searching for a web page is not only annoying but costly. Everyone with a website who relies on the Internet for their valued income has or will have been effected by a 404 not found message. Most website owners have no idea how many times a 404 page is being displayed to their potential customers, what they can do about it and what options are available so they don't lose sales.
404 not found simply means people who have visited a website have arrived at a page that is temporarily unavailable. This is usually either because the visitor has entered incorrect URL, an incorrect link, the website owner has removed this page or it has been moved. Many of us have been given directions to a web site page, only to arrive and seen an ugly 404 error page. I know I don't usually bother trying to find the page again and I just move on to another website that the owner has taken the time to maintain properly. Even it was me the visitor that typed in the wrong URL, I am sometimes in too much of a hurry to go back and type in in again. As a websurfer clicking on a certain link, when you are hoping to find out more about something only to end up on some generic 404 not found error it really can be quite deflating and leave you with a poor impression of the website as a whole.. This is not what the website owner wants visitors doing on their website!
As we all know we are an impatient bunch us millions of Internet users, and when we don't get exactly what we want we move on. We click back to the search page and quickly go to the next website down on our list! We know how brutal our impatience is online. The mere fact that we have a huge choice means we act like spoilt children and we have the power to jump very quickly to another website. For the average website owner, the loss of sales that goes with this impatient group of internet users is unquantified. What could have been a happy customer instead is a person who just walked out of the door and who will no doubt walk into someone else's shop to spend their money. Visualize if you will a retailer setting up a shop, putting shelves up, displaying your merchandise and proudly standing back looking at your new venture in anticipation of customers arriving. In walks a customer with cash to burn, searching for that exact product that your marketing has told them your shop stocks, and seeing a huge sign up where they stock should be saying "sorry this wall is temporarily unavailable" (404 not found page flashing here). They turn around and walk across the road to the shop just opposite selling the exact same thing, find what they are looking for and spend the cash feeling satisfied.
In the internet world 404 pages are like big walls to a buyers satisfaction.
The good news is - you can bypass the dreaded 404 process and lead your customer to another area of the store. You can install a small script in a couple of minutes that send the customer to any page you like - or have it "guess" the page customer has tried to find. It can also send you an email telling you when this happens in real time.
The fact is:
- Most website owners have no idea when a 404 page is happening and where (how much its costing them).
- A good 404 not found error script sends an email telling the webmaster when a 404 not found page was triggered and the visitors get directed to a page of the webmasters choice - or the script can guess the URL they were looking for.
- You install a small php script on your webserver in less than 10 mins
- It will send you an email alert of the offending url - so that you or your webmaster can take corrective action to make sure the page your visitors are looking for is available or spelled correctly
- It will try to guess the correct page your visitors are searching for and automatically redirect them to that page if it's on your server. Otherwise, it will redirect them to a custom page you specify (e.g. your optin page, newsletter, search page, sitemap, etc)
Thankfully the dreaded 404 not found error message is a challenge that can easily be overcome. With scripts and tools available to rectify this problem immediately and tell a webmaster where the error was generated they can go back and fix the link or create a redirect.
It's really easy to take back control of 404 error pages. As a website owner its possible to create a detour instead of making a potential customer have to overcome the obstacles and arrive at the optimal destination where we want customers to be.
www.error404profits.com teaches webmasters how to use a simple trick to restore credibility and save lost traffic from their error 404 not found pages.
Article submitted Wednesday, November 11, 2009 & read 136 times.
Leave Your Comments:
0-0-0-0-0-ADSO