404 error pages, sponsorship and advertising network

6Mar/090

The "404 Error Page" is one that web designers commonly fail to utilise and turn a poor user experience into one that allows for continuity of the website visit, enhances the experience or just illustrates that not every website is perfect, but you respect that and do something about it.

With some clever scripting, CSS and an objective to deliver the user to another web page on you site, rather than them hitting the back button or leaving your site completely, the 404 error page can be your saviour.

Even I've found that it can be problematic and difficult to manage all pages on your website, when you start to change pages, delete categories or tags, or incorrectly link to a page internally. Many child pages really do become orphans.

I landed on a great 404 error page today on Zopa.com, which is a financial services company dealing with loans. In fact one of the best I've seen for a few years. Shows that companies do have a sense of humour and are web savvy to address the black hole that is a 404. Try it and see for yourself.

Some websites will use the 404 to try and redirect people back to their homepage, or add a search function to the page and get the user to research for the page they were looking for. This is common if the have moved the page, likely due to a website redesign, or archiving of content.

Searching the web, a few sites tell you how to maximise this misfortune for users and turn it into an opportunity. There is even a WordPress SEO 404 plugin, that someone has built to give users a mix if content you already have on the site, that is indexed by Google.

Advertising on 404 error pages represents a great opportunity to boost website revenues.

If you could get you 404 error page sponsored, you could have a lot of fun with it. Get a brand that would be a real fit to the customers to promote themselves on the page for a fixed tenancy if you can show the reporting on your site that it makes commercial sense to the brand.

Imagine the potential revenue publishers could earn if they are seeing thousands of 404 error pages in their site analytics. Or the viral marketing it could attract, with people trying to generate a 404 page error. It would be like Google Whacking a website to see some special page with a voucher code, reward or special offer. This would then drive people back into their online shops to purchase goods.

Or if you are a media owner or an online publisher which carries advertising, why not stick some advertising on there if your site gets millions of page views. In the event that your site gets the 404 curse, you could make some cash on the back of it.

But if you don't carry advertising, and you or your company have a sense of humour, then stick something funny on the 404 error page. Make someone smile for a change, and show the web how creative you can with a page that almost everyone else seems to ignore.