Jun 18 2008

An Absolute Pointless Custom 404-Error Page

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The general purpose of having a custom 404-error page is to keep your visitors on your site if they find themselves having clicked on a broken link. Why go through the trouble to create the customize page if it doesn’t even fulfill this basic purpose?

I recently ran across a custom 404 page that did everything but what it should.

Improperly constructed 404 Redirect Page

This screen capture doesn’t even give it justice. The best thing this has going for it is that it at least let’s you know what site you’re on. But there is nowhere to go after that. Not even the logo is hyperlinked to the home page!

So what’s missing here?

Well, the only thing you really need to do to fix this is to provide links! They sell DVDs, Cds Video Games, Books and more. Why not throw links to these categories on this page? It’ll only take a couple of seconds to give this the Amazon.com bare minimum fix. But while you’re at it, go ahead and spice it up a bit! Throw in a couple of top selling products, or show me what’s currently hot. Give me a few options to send me merrily on my way to making a purchase!

Oh, and don’t tell me to try my request again later. That does me no good, especially if the link still doesn’t work later. That would just be… pointless.

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3 Responses to “An Absolute Pointless Custom 404-Error Page”

  1. The Online Lead Generation Blog » Blog Archive » It was only a simple mistake! says:

    [...] found” text? They wanted to be on your site, so you should be giving them more than that. In An Absolute Pointless Custom 404-Error Page, the E-Marketing Performance blog shows how someone has gone to the effort of creating their own [...]

  2. A Mesa SEO says:

    We have a customer 404 page but it simply is a sitemap.

  3. Stoney deGeyter says:

    You sure about that?

    http://mesaseo.com/sdfdfd/sdfdsfds

    Using a sitemap for a 404 page is good in that you’re providing links to site pages, but I still believe it is important for people to know that they landed on a page that doesn’t exist. It prevents confusion.

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