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Best Tips On How To Design Your 404 Page To Keep The Visitor On Your Website
How many times had you come across a message that the requested page does not exist? And what steps did you used to take in such a situation?
We bet that you will simply close the tab and leave without even trying to figure out why this had happened.
Now imagine that this situation is happening on your own website. Every time your visitors encounter 404 error, you are most likely to lose your potential client!
And basically, people leave not because of the fact they encountered the error, but because your 404 error page is poorly designed and doesn’t encourage the visitor to continue engaging with your website!
You don’t have to create some unusual and well-designed 404 error page on your website, but this little thing can change the attitude of your visitors for the better. And this, of course, would positively affect your website’s conversion and help your visitors to make the right decision about the purchase or ordering services from you.
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So now we will give you the most important tips on how to design your 404 page to make the visitor remember it for a long time, and, who knows, maybe it will even become viral!
- Why 404web page design is so important
There are many reasons why you should be concerned about your 404-webpage design. If it just says something like “Page not found”, it wouldn’t be of any use or interest for the visitor. The fact is that even the “Back to homepage” link does not always help here.
Poorly designed 404 web page creates a poor impression of the visitor. Just imagine: all this time he was looking for a certain page on your site, but then he hits the broken link, and he will be forced to return to the website’s main page and start searching all over again. If he doesn’t find what he is looking for, he will immediately leave the website.
Ideally, the user will never encounter such errors… But that happens! Anyway, creatively designed 404 web page with the interesting text block gives you the chance to say that use are sorry for this situation and help your website’s visitor find what he is looking for. A satisfied visitor will most likely return to your website!
The situation gets much worse if the 404 page is completely lost. The visitor will have no idea what is happening. The absence of such a page will show that the website’s owners aren’t the real professionals, that they do not care much about the website’s visitors, so he will leave the website.
Now try to understand the main thing: custom, creative, useful, and attractive 404 page design attracts the people’s attention and inspires them to stay on your website longer.
Let’s take a brief look at the basic techniques used by web designers and UI specialists to optimize these error pages on the websites. With proper optimization, even the 404 page can become a good landing page, successfully sell the product and attract website visitors.
- «Classic» rules for designing the 404 page
There are some «classic» rules for designing the 404 page. Remember that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel – you just make it simple and clear:
- Placing the logo and the name of the site, company, project allows the visitor to understand that the site is still working. He just clicks on the logo and gets redirected to the main page.
- Placing the message that clearly tells the visitor what has happened and (preferably) what to do next.
- Creating a noticeable button that takes the visitor to the main page of the site.
- Placing the contact information of the website owner, so that if the visitor wants to contact him, he can easily do it.
- Integrating the Icons of social networks – once a person came to visit you, it would be really nice to offer him to follow you on social networks.
- Choose a design that perfectly matches the style of your website
In order not to confuse the website’s user, you should style your 404 page in a similar way as the entire site is designed.
This creates the integrity of the virtual space of your web-resource, and it is crucial for the visitor, who is searching the answers for his questions here.
Always remember that you can go for creative, minimalistic design – that’s the 404 page timeless classics!
- Post a link to the main page of the site
If you own a large website, with lots of web pages with different content, then the 404 page that contains the site map, links to the most visited pages or a simple search bar will help your visitor to find the way out.
The correct 404 page of a small site should offer a link to the website’s main page and a menu to help the visitor with the question «what should I do» and will be able to continue using your website.
- Design your page 404 in a creative way
An interesting and funny 404 page is the proven way to get the visitor to react with humor and the best way to convince him to stay. But the 404 page text doesn’t necessarily has to be humorous, you can also add some interesting images of relevant content.
This page perfectly suits for expressing unusual creative ideas that are inappropriate in other sections of the website. Just browse the Web and you’ll find many great examples of the 404 error page design: according to statistics, only the 404 page text (without any images) decreases the number of visitors who leave the website by 2-3 times. Can you imagine how many visitors you lose when you are too lazy to design a 404 page properly and do not allow a visitor to take any action other than closing the browser tab?! Think about it.
And one more important thing: interesting and beautiful 404 page design smooth out the negative visitor’s reaction and allows to slightly improve behavioral factors.
And remember to keep it simple! The 404 page design should be simple and even funny. Once again – it’s just like you are apologizing for a funny, awkward situation.
The amazing 404 page design van even make your visitors to send it to their friends!
- Explain the cause of the 404 error
Do not forget to briefly tell the visitor why he had encountered this problem.
After all, not everyone knows what a 404 error is and what they should do in this situation. But avoid going onto technical details: make it short, clear and creative!
- Make your 404 page helpful
Make it maximally helpful for the user. You can apply the following elements:
- Search bar
- Link to home page
- List of most popular pages
- Link to site map
- Bad Link Message Button.
You can always find ways to turn the common 404 page into a very useful webpage – both for yourself and for the visitor. You’ll just have to think creatively! For example, the excellent idea for this page for online stores is placing some similar or recently viewed products on the 404 page.
- Be friendly, be clear
Be friendly and polite. Don’t think that everyone knows what the 404 error is.
You really have to explain what happened, what the problem is, but in a quite a friendly manner. Try to say something like: “Oops! We cannot find the page you are looking for.”, than something really dull like: “404 error. Page not found”.
Here are some options for your 404 page message:
“Congrats! You were so lucky to visit the only website page that no longer exists! Try other website pages to find what you were looking for!
“404… We are so sorry, but this page was lost somewhere in the galaxy of the Web. Stop looking for it, try pages that do exist!”
“My friend, it’s a pity, but we could not find the page you were looking for…”
“Are you looking for something interesting on our website? Unfortunately, the page you request does not exist anymore… “
“Welcome to page 404! You can hardly find something interesting here, but you will surely find a lot of interesting things on other pages of our Website! ”.
- Give your visitor an explanation of why this happened
You won’t believe it, but usually, you won’t find even the simplest test block on 404 page!
The owners of the website simply use something dull like this: “Error 404. The page does not exist or it has been deleted”, leaving the visitor confused.
We are pretty sure that the owner of the website can at least try to explain what happened (if he really cares about the website visitors).
Here are some examples:
- “…The page you requested may have been moved or deleted. Maybe you’ve made a small typo when entering the address – this happens even with us sometimes, so carefully check the address again”.
- “…Most likely, this happened for one of the following reasons: the page has moved, the page no longer exists or you just like to study 404 pages”.
- Tell the visitor what to do next
You can always redirect the visitor to the home page of the website (or any other popular page, if it will help him find what he was looking for). Or, you can offer the visitor to use the integrated search bar to find the things he needs.
You can place some helpful text here:
- “…Please, use this search to find the information you need”.
- “…Click here to visit the main page, where you can find a lot of useful information”.
- “…Please use the navigation or search to find the information you are interested in”.
- Additional tips
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- Avoid the phrases like “Error 404” (the word “error” can scare away a visitor), choose a softer “Page 404” version of it instead.
- Once again, in order not to scare away the visitors of your website, it is advisable to remove any warning signs (“stop”, “attention”) from the 404 page design.
- If you have a serious business website. that is customer oriented, we recommend you to follow a clear and rigorous style of presentation.
- If you have blog or an entertainment website – you can opt for a more informal style, using humor and originality – the main thing is that your idea should focus on the format of perception of readers’ information.
- Many websites use funny relevant pictures that will definitely make a person stay on a website for a couple of seconds and make them smile, and, believe us, this is half the battle! Someone goes even further and post some relevant videos.
- Some websites use interesting interactive elements to entertain the visitor, to turn it in some kind of game, and to offer some useful content. It’s quite possible that the visitor will remember your website for that and even bookmark it.
- These pages are even used for promotions, helping to increase the customer base. It’s an excellent chance to increase the level of trust with your customers and to motivate the customers to buy something they need.
