When visitors to your site follow a broken link or mistype a URL, they get a familiar 404 error page. Most websites have a standard and remarkably unhelpful 404 page, leaving most visitors to conclude that there is something wrong with your site. For many, it's the end of the line. They surf away and find somewhere else to obtain information or order product, and you lose the business.
Creating a custom 404 error page that offers helpful information is easy and will encourage visitors to continue exploring your site. Most web hosts will allow custom pages; some will not. Check the server documentation of your web host to find out how to make changes.
Because a 404 page is usually standard HTML, it can be customized in any way. Here are some tips on what to include in your custom 404 page:
* Your 404 page should have the same look and feel, including interface graphics and menu options, as the rest of the site. This tells the visitor that it is an active site, and they have arrived at the location, if not the exact page, they were searching for.
* Remember that not every visitor will be web savvy and understand what the error message means. Use friendly, easy to understand language to clearly relate that the desired page does not exist. Include a link to the home page and to the site map.
* Consider including a search box, in case the content still exists on a different page.
* Offer your visitors a way to report the broken link.
* Verify that your server still returns a legitimate 404 HTTP status code so that the error page won't be indexed by search engines.
Another possibility to handle bad links to your site is by making your 404 page a simple redirect that will send visitors to your home page. Provide them a short message explaining that the page is missing and that they will be automatically redirected to the home page.