404:Error. Problem. Page not found.
November 5, 2007 6:19 PM | Written by Stephen Downs
Perhaps the single most important page in a web development project.
What happens when your tenured, learned and invested consumer/user decides to return to their favorite and often desired page that they have bookmarked? What happens when a relaunch sends all your hard earned, invaluable inward links to a new spot? The answer: What happens is you just created a very annoyed and very lost user, the affect of which can leave your user with a sour taste for your brand. You better believe that if one person is experiencing this, many others are as well.
But don't worry, all is not loss. You fortunatly have one trick up your sleeve: 404.
Four steps to a successful 404 page:
1. Descriptive text: explaining the recent changes on the site. Be upfront, announce a relaunch or reorganization of content - honesty goes a long way in clearing up the frustration of a lost user.
2. A clearly defined link to the sites homepage. By clearly I mean prominent, obvious, in my face. Placed in an area of high prioritization in a web users "F" shaped reading pattern.
Why not add design here too?
3. A link to the full sitemap (which in theory is representative of your complete site offering and is easy to use - more on sitemaps to come) or even include a top level site map on the 404 page
&
4. Perhaps most important and yet little used, is a large area of real estate dedicated to the sites internal search functionality. Afterall, statistically users are accustomed to using this functionality to find their content need why make them find this elsewhere on the page than the main body?
The take away here is provide your users with to tools to get them out of the mess you created, its the least you can do.
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