Keep Your Visitors Smiling, Even on Error Pages

By: Andrew Grant

A web guru friend of mine recently surprised me with some valuable information I've been missing for years.

We were discussing the subject of error pages and he revealed something that was completely new to me. "Of course you can customize your error pages".

I was amazed. He nearly fell off his chair laughing at me when I said that I always thought those 404 error pages came from some central internet point beyond my reach and that they all looked exactly the same.

When he had calmed down a little, he patiently explained that an there are scores of error codes covering many different situations. They are all three digits, such as 500 – Server Error, 408 – Request Timeout and of course the familiar 404 – Not found, which most of us see fairly regularly.

He went on to say that 404 errors are sometimes caused by users incorrectly typing in a page name, but quite often it can be just a communication glitch between one end and the other and if you hit refresh, you'll usually get right back on track.

Despite what I thought, the content of error pages does not come from some omnipotent global hub, some kind of web-central, but are in fact pages held on the server of your web host. If an error condition is flagged up the server simply dips into the directory and throws up a standard error page.

Now that means that you can replace their standard error pages with something of your own and simply tell the host to serve that instead. And that started me thinking very hard.

How would it be if I was able to take the chance to make my visitors smile instead of groan and assist them in a friendly way to get back to where they were going. My friend explained that we simply needed to create two files and upload them to my site.

The first one is the replacement error page itself. I decided we should give it the same look and feel as the rest of my site, so we added the banner at the top and some of the navigation links. Then I entered a cheery message saying "Oops, sorry – something's gone wrong. It happens sometimes, but don't worry, it's not serious. Click here and we'll have you back on track in no time" Then at the bottom is a simple link to take people back to my homepage.

On a large site with multiple pages, it might be more user friendly if they can then link straight to your sitemap and figure out what they want from there.

The second file is one called .htaccess. This is a little text file, which contains a few lines of code telling your web-host which errors to pick up and which page to show in which event. Simple. Well simple for my friend anyway, but he assures me that anyone halfway competent can do it. In fact he says that your web-host will probably have full instructions on their help pages.

So what's the point of doing this? One of the key reasons is the impatience of the average user; we are all impulsive button pushers and if it stops we get easily irritated. The last thing you want to do, is have this drive your prospects away, so take advantage of this opportunity to strengthen the tenuous relationship, just before it is broken off.

Secondly, as any good web marketer knows, any chance that you have to make a positive impression is worth grabbing. Your error page is another opportunity to show your personality to your site visitors, so choose a friendly tone and it will be appreciated.

So take a closer look at your error pages and learn to make them lovable.