Making Use of Your 404 Pages (no script needed)

It’s Edmund here with a business optimization tip: ever thought of doing something to your Error Pages, especially your 404 – Page Not Found error pages?

I’ve implemented this since several months ago, and noticed a slight, though not major, increase in my subscriptions. Probably thanks to the 404 Error Pages.

Here’s what I did:

This is one of the few types of pages that would show up if a visitor visits a web page that doesn’t exist on any of my websites. The visitor may have misspelled the web page URL, or the page genuinely doesn’t exist due to linking error (though I make doubly sure all of my web pages are linked correctly).

However instead of a blank, white page with a not-so-nice message – I turned my 404 Error Page into another means for getting new leads.

Initially, I depended on a script to do this. I wasn’t technically savvy (and still am not). But I learned that it’s actually possible, and actually easier, to do if you would just go to your web hosting’s cpanel.

The steps are easy and you can very well turn your 404 Error Pages – and perhaps other Error Pages if you want – to another means of capturing more new leads.

Here goes…

Step 1. Log into your hosting’s Cpanel. Look for an option called “Error Pages”.

Step 2. Choose 404. As you can see, there are other Error Pages you can choose to edit if you want to, but let’s not go off topic and stick to making use of your 404 ‘real estate’.

Step 3. Paste the HTML codes for your 404 Error Page. Start the web page with highlighting the Error, like Oops… Page Not Found! You can choose to publish your products for sale here, but from experience it’s better to offer a free gift and capture the leads. Since the visitor is probably looking for information.

When you are done, click on SAVE. Voila!

You can spend as little as a few minutes making this tweak to your website, depending on how many you have.

As said, you don’t need a third party script for this and you can carry the change out easily. You only need to do this once and you can literally set and forget.

3 Comments

Profolegy on October 20th, 2009

Thanks for the tip this will make do something about mine

Clemence Ko on October 31st, 2009

Now that is a very good tip. I am not tech savvy too. But i was wondering do we need an option for the browser to go back to our main site? Cause maybe he is already a subscriber and i would not like to annoy him.

Thanks for sharing!