Quality Components Of Custom 404 Error Pages

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Nick Wilson

Every major website has a Custom 404 Error Page, usually graphic intensive and a little ridiculous to intrigue the user. In my opinion the best 404 error pages are sleek and simple, but have a little humor through graphics or text. The purpose of these pages is to direct your visitor from an unavaliable page to the content they were looking for in the first place.

What Makes A Good Page

First things first, you need to find out if your web hosting has this ability enabled for your website. Many free hosting websites will not allow you to customize a personal 404 Error Page. This lack of personal customization within your website can have a negative impact your overall ranks, so it’s important to obtain this feature. An easy way to tell if your hosting supports this, is to see if your able to edit your .htaccess file, 9/10 times they go hand and hand.

There are a few key components of a 404 Error page that help keep the visitors from backing out, remember they are getting an ‘error’ which they weren’t expecting. If your page is enticing the chance of the visitor bouncing within the site is higher. Hopefully the catchy image or text can keep your visitors from clicking the back button.

• Apologize: They are not getting the information they were attempting to reach, so apologize to the user in order to keep the friendly atmosphere. Consider the user as well, this error isn’t their fault, most of the time it’s the webmasters, so try not to make such a cookie cutter response.
• Theme: Keep the same theme while still introducing enticing graphics that keeps the user interested. To often designers/webmasters go overboard and lose the looks of the original theme, overwhelming the visitor.
• Bad Jokes: If you plan on using a joke or a copy for your 404 Page, make sure it makes sense and isn’t just funny to you. Nothing turns some one away faster than a bad joke.
• Custom: Don’t use a generic image that you found off of Google to be your 404 ‘captivating image. You can create your own image using a photo editor like Photoshop or hire a designer to do it for you. My point is, be unique.

Internet Explorer only displays custom 404 Error Pages if the page itself is larger than 512 bytes, if your using WordPress you shouldn’t have much trouble with page size. All four of those components, when used correctly, make a custom Error Page that should keep the user interested upon page failure.