404 pages can be fun

The value of a good 404 page is often underrated and with so much competition on the web, it’s important to ensure that your 404 page stands out from the rest.

Many users are unsure of the purpose or role of a 404 page and are likely, when coming across one, to leave the site. In order to protect yourself there are some steps you can take against this.

What are 404 pages

A 404 page is what a user sees when a page on a website it not available because the requested page could not be found on the server of the website they are looking at. This could be because the page they are looking at has been removed, or because they typed the URL wrong.

Be helpful

Rather than assuming the your visitor understands the issue and knows how to resolve the problem, give them plenty of options to use to help navigate to the page they need. Ideas include a search bar, home page link and links to other popular articles on the website, they will have plenty of options for continuing across your website.

Be funny

Many websites choose to add a bit of humour to their 404 pages. This can help to manage a situation that could otherwise be annoying for visitors. Jokes in reference to the error will usually be successful as it shows that the website acknowledges the hassle and is attempting to compensate for it.

Stay on-brand

It’s too easy to create a generic 404 page, but they can be used as a fantastic opportunity to re-establish your brand and voice. Using the colours and fonts most closely associated with the company will reassure those customers are confused, while also keeping them on track with the company message.

Here are some examples of interesting 404 pages.

BBC 404 page

The BBC’s 404 page

The BBC offer an iconic image and some useful suggestions.

Virgin's 404 page

Virgin Travel‘s 404 page

Virgin doesn’t let 404’s get in the way of businesses, its 404 pages let customers search for cruise holidays!

Technology Bloggers 404 page shows a HTML hole (it’s just an image!) and gives some helpful suggestions.

How important is the quality of hosting to online retailers?

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With many brick-and-mortar businesses adding an online version of their high-street store to their portfolio, it’s important that firms choose the right web hosting service. With myriad services offering cheap deals, firms ought to be wary regarding offers that appear to be too good to be true – because they usually are.

On the surface, purchasing web hosting that costs £20 a month seems like a steal. In fact, it is a steal. However the only thing that is being nicked is precious uptime for online retailers, as the vast majority of cheap hosts go hand-in-hand with downtime.

Downtime – a retailer’s worst nightmare

For online retailers, downtime is especially important; every second of downtime is potentially a lost sale. Would you rather pay a premium for quality web hosting that is reliable and constantly up, or pay a third of the price for web hosting that keeps going down? In the long-term, it may cost more for firms to pay for cheap, but less reliable hosting.

In addition, utilising the services of a web hosting service in your time zone could be important, especially for smaller firms. Imagine if your store goes down but your hosting service is half-way across the world. This is certainly not ideal for any stores looking to make sales. For example, let’s just say your UK-based store goes down at lunchtime. No amount of calls at 12pm is going to wake a firm located half-way across the world; tucked up in bed at 12am. It’s a nightmare scenario.

SEO

The importance of SEO over the last 10 years has changed the face of the internet. An increasing number of online retailers are producing fresh content in a bid to become a publishing authority in the eyes of search engines.

However, when a cheap hosting company offers dead links, 404 errors and other harmful downtime to a retailer, what are these search engines going to think? Bounced traffic isn’t going to look good in the eyes of Google or Bing.

Technology Bloggers 404 error

Technology Bloggers 404 Page

Eventually, a retailer could slip down the rankings, and get flanked by its competition. It takes a lot of dedication to work up the search rankings, so don’t let a bogus hosting firm ruin your company and its prospects.

Security

In addition, security should be a top priority for online retailers. The amount of hackers roaming cyberspace is vast and make no mistake – they’re ready to capitalise on unprotected websites. By opting for secure web hosting which features STFP and SSL, a business and its clients can feel assured that all sensitive data is kept in safe hands.

As you can see, the quality of web hosting is an absolutely integral part of the foundations of success for online retailers. In an era of cost cutting and tight purse strings, it might be tempting to lump with a cheap web hosting service from the other side of the world, but in the long-term you may end up opening your wallet more often than you think.