Posted on March 04, 2005

Things (and examples) to include on a customized 404 error page

First, word about the meaning of the "404 Not Found" error page. If you're a web developer, know this: the vast majority of people online do not know why it's called "404 Not Found", and none of them care. 99% of the people who see this page are unhappy about it, and are convinced that what they're looking for really is there, and that the site is deliberately hiding it from them.

So let's turn their frowns upside down, and make the 404 Not Found page a beacon of hope.

First, a few assumptions on which these guidelines are based:

  1. The user is at the correct site. If they got the root part of the URL wrong (they meant perhaps to go to www.notsoswoft.com, and not www.notsoswift.com, then they're outta luck. Unless you have a URL which is similar (to the point of possibly being copywrite infringing) to another popular URL, you're under no obligation to redirect people elsewhere.
  2. You have more than one page on your site.
  3. You have been careful about redirecting inbound links to pages you no longer want or have on your site.
  4. You care whether or not people coming to your site find what they're looking for.

OK, with those items in mind, here are a few guidelines which I've collected from experience, and from other sources I think are either credible, or at least funny:

Tip 1: Treat a poorly-typed URL like a mis-typed search term, and respond accordingly. First, repeat for the user what they appeared to have been looking for.

Tip 2: While you can include a message indicating that the user might want to try retyping the link, the better alternative is to try suggesting alternative links that have very similar spelling or, more vitally, meaning. Some examples:


Tip 3: A list of the no more than 10 of the most popular pages on the site. It's best if this is dynamically driven based on actual usage, and includes deep links to hard-to-find pages. Extra-credit goes to Amazon, which makes this list user-profile driven.

Tip 4: The ability (and encouragement) to use a search function, the site has a good search interface/backend. Most users search once, and then leave - so if you can't guarantee good search results, then often it's better not to offer a search function at all.

Tip 5: Include a link that allows people to contact you directly, if you feel confident that you can respond within 24 hours to any inquiry, no matter how inane. This tip is really only recommended for sites where customer acquisition is a key goal, individual customers have high value (for example, you offer a service or product which is very expensive), and customer support is available 24 hours a day.

The better method here is to offer live help of one sort or another, so that you can respond to inquiries immediately.

Tip 6: A link to the home page (though generally that's captured if you're using the site's standard page template, which includes logo, navigation, etc.) can be helpful for vistors who arrive through old broken links or through URLs that were misspelled in the first instance. Note that it is not acceptable to automatically reroute visitors to your homepage, the way Lands End does.

Tip 7: I also like to add something humorous that shows people that there is a real voice behind the site. Something to break up the frustration that people feel when they can't find what they're looking for.

While I haven't implemented all of these features for notsoswift's 404 error page, I have implemented some of them. Feel free to take a look (and while doing so, note that I have made use of some rather basic Apache error handlers to customize the error code for the user.):

Hop on over to a notsoswift.com page that clearly doesn't exist.

Posted by Ben at March 04, 2005 02:02 PM