I'm sure its happened to you.
 No need to lose visitors when they get lost on your site |
|
It can happen as easily as copying and pasting a partial link from an email. It may happen by accident when a web site gets rearranged.
Either way, the last thing you want anyone coming to your site to see is "This page cannot be found" or "Error 404 Page Not Found".
If you check your web site stats, you are likely to find hundreds of 404 errors log each month.
Go ahead and try it out on your site. Simply add any gibberish page name onto your domain name like this:
www.smallbusinesswebsite.com/asdfasdfasdf.htm
If your site is showing an error instead of redirecting them to a valid page, you want to fix that!
 |
|
In fact, many web site hosting companies allow you to control this right from the control panel. They simply ask you where to resend any visitors when this problem comes up.
If you can't find it on your control panel, ask your hosting company tech support if they have it in place. Many of them do.
Even if your hosting company does not have a fix, there are numerous scripts to handle this.
You can download the free Pageguard script from this page.
There is another free script for this problem which you can download here.
They come complete with directions on how to get it working.
You don't only have to send them to your site's main page. You can offer them a special page which:
- promotes your newsletter to build your optin list
- direct link to your signup or purchase page
- an affiliate promotion page
Basically try out different tactics and track the results to see what works best for you.
The bottom line is, there is no reason to be losing traffic to visitors who get an error on your site. Take the opportunity to make sure they get redirected to a good page. It can be challenging enough to get traffic to your site, there is no reason to lose them!
SmallBusinessWebSite.com
PO Box 1228, Hampton, NH 03843, (603) 365-6205
All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission prohibited.