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Are you sometimes tooling around on the web, clicking your way through links, when suddenly you come to a dreaded dead end: the 404 Not Found page? Do you wonder what those darn error pages are all about? They are often brick walls that force you to back track, and they can be very annoying. If you have a website, you want to make sure that visitors to your site aren’t led into one of these dead ends. If these dead links are exasperating to you when you are surfing the Net, they are exasperating to your guests as well, the last people you want to annoy. But, if utilized correctly, 404 pages can actually help your visitors find the content they were searching for. They do not need to be brick walls.
What is a 404 page?
404 is a Hypertext Transfer Protocol status code. Hypertext Transfer Protocol is the protocol web servers use to communicate with web browsers. When you type in a URL to try to visit a web page, your computer sends a request message to the server and the server sends back the HTTP header to your browser, which includes a status message before you even see the web page. Normally, if everything is correct, the status code is “200 OK”, but you don’t see it because you see the page you were looking for. But if the server cannot find the page you are looking for, it reports the status as “404 Not Found”.
But what does it really mean?
The numbers 4-0-4 each actually mean something as individual
digits. The first 4 is telling you, the client, that there is a
mistake on your end, such as a possibly mistyped URL or a request
for a page that no longer exists. The 0 just represents a syntax
error- it basically just means “something isn’t
right”. Now after the 4-0, the last number could be any one
of several digits that indicates the type of error. The 4 in that
section means that the page cannot be located. Another status
messages could be 401, which means you are unauthorized to view
that page.
There is a clever myth behind the 404 Not Found message. The
story goes that 404 was the room number of the room where the
very first web servers were located. But there story includes a
mystery- there is no room 404 in that building at CERN, where the
first web servers were held. So the 404 Not Found code is a bit
of an inside joke for those who have heard the story.
How To Utilize Status Code Information
You can use your log files to spot “404s” by reviewing the logs of your status codes. Take note any of 404 occurrences. If there seem to be quite a few, more than you could chalk up to user error, you might have a broken link in there somewhere. Check the referring page, the page the user was at just before arriving that the 404, then inspect that page to find the broken link and fix it. If you do not have access to your log files, you can request them from your website host.
So why exactly do these 404 error pages exist?
The 404 Not Found Page comes up on your screen for several
different reasons.
1) The page may have been moved. In this case, it is as though
you are trying to visit a friend when you find a note taped to
their door that says they have moved. But it doesn’t tell
you where they moved to. Not very helpful, is it? The 404 Not
Found page is a note like that.
2) The hyperlink you followed my have a minor error in the
URL.
3) The page may simply be gone. Not moved. Just taken down. And
whatever linked you to it doesn’t know it. This is a form
of Linkrot.
Linkrot refers to outdated or abandoned URLs across the Internet.
If you take a page down or change the URL, other sites that have
links to your page will have the wrong URL, causing Linkrot to
occur, and sending people who click on those links, expecting to
come to your page, right for a lovely visit from the Error Page
Fairy.
How do you avoid the Error Page? Help stop Linkrot. If links
continue to lead to dead ends, the flow of the Internet will be
interrupted, dramatically reducing the usability of the web. You
may not be able to stop another site from screwing up URLs
linking to your site and creating a dead link to your site, but
you can at least maintain the links and pages on your own
site.
You must regularly check the outgoing links from your site to
make certain that they still lead to existing pages. It is your
responsibility to ensure that the links on your site lead to
actual destinations and not error pages. Internal links should be
maintained as well. AlertBox’s Jakob Nielsen believes that
URLs should “live forever”; that there is no reason
to let a page you built languish abandoned and outdated.
Of course, sometimes you cannot help but remove a page or change
its URL, and you will not be able to always prevent the
occurrence of an Error Page. But if you can’t avoid an
Error Page, at least make it work for you!
Good Error Page: Not An Oxymoron
Turn an error into an advantage by designing your own error
page for your site and making it interesting, informative,
helpful, and even fun.
According to Jakob Nielsen there are 5 rules for making a good
Error Page:
1) Design an error page specific to your site, rather than
sending your visitors to the browser’s standard Error
page.
2) Politely apologize and tell your user that that page cannot be
found on that URL, and apologize for the inconvenience.
3) Include a list of suggested links of pages that might hold the
information they are looking for, after studying your log files
to see which errors are made the most.
4) If you can, have your server automatically run a spelling
check on the requested URL to search for any spelling mistakes
and suggest possible corrections, and make those suggestions
direct links to those pages.
5) Lastly, have your error page contain a search field so as a
last resort your user can search your site for what they were
looking for.
“Area 404”, a website dedicated to creativity and
usability of error pages, has performed what they call a
“highly scientific” survey of 1375 people regarding
the usability of error pages. Their survey consisted of one
question:
When you encounter a 404 do you:
A) Hit the back button and forget about it.
B) Try to get to the homepage to locate the missing page.
C) Write to the Webmaster.
D) Weep uncontrollably.
The results were: 36.92% hit the back button and forgot about it.
20.37% tried to get the to homepage to locate the missing page.
Only 2.82% actually took the time to write to the Webmaster
(Webmasters take note of this). And 39.88% of those surveyed said
they wept uncontrollably.
What have we learned from this ultra-scientific survey? People do
not like error pages! But if you can make your page catchy and
helpful, you will keep people on your site.
Area 404 has their own guidelines to what makes a good 404 page.
In addition to the ones listed by Jakob Nielsen, they add that
you could include a link to contact the Webmaster to inform them
of the error. They definitely suggest that you at the very least
include a link to your homepage.
Sometimes you may find that the Internet Explorer browser does
not display your own homemade error page and instead insists on
displaying it’s own friendly version. Though their version
may be nicer to look at than the classic “404 Not
Found” page, it is not as helpful or useful for your
customers as your own page, so you will want to make sure your
page is the one that is displayed.
You can force Internet Explorer to stop ignoring your page and
start displaying it by making sure it is greater than 512 bytes,
not including graphics. At that size, IE will not ignore it and
will display your page instead of its standard one. 512 bytes
gives you a great deal of space to work with, which you can fill
up with text on the actual page or in comments in the source
code.
Ok, so we know what sort of information you should include on your error pages to make them usable for your visitors. But what creative ways can you make your 404 pages a pleasure rather than a pain? Here are some examples from Area 404:
404
Something went screwy!
I have all good intentions that you should never, ever see this page, but the best-laid schemes of mice and men oft' go astray...uh...in this case, it's the URL you were attempting to access that seems to have gone astray.
If the link you followed resides on foo.net,
please send e-mail to example@foo.net.
You can return to familiar territory by using your browser's BACK
button, or start fresh at the front door and perhaps you'll find
what you were looking for.
www.foo.net
Of course if you just found this page because you're hooked on
404's, you'll enjoy following these other links instead:
404 Error
404 Research
Lab
To see other examples of how creative 404 pages can be, either purposefully go out and look for them by mistyping URLs willy-nilly, or check out Area 404’s treasure trove of examples at http://www.plinko.net/404/area404.asp.
Redirects
Now there is an alternative to displaying an error page. If
you find there is a page that is consistently getting mistyped,
or if you have moved a page that you know many people will be
trying to view, instead of just showing them an error page you
can automatically redirect them to the correct page. You can use
a 404 in correlation with redirection, by having a 404 page that
informs you visitor “We’re sorry, that page has
moved. In a few second you will be automatically redirect to the
correct page.” That makes it easy for your visitors, since
they just have to sit back and wait, rather than having to click
links to find the new page themselves. Have that page be
displayed for about 4 or 5 seconds, and then have the server send
them to the right page.
The HTML for redirects is simple. It will tell the server to
automatically “refresh” the page, but by refreshing
it will bring up a different URL. Here is the code:
<HTML>
<head>
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="5;
URL=not404.htm">
</head>
</HTML>
The “CONTENT” is the amount of seconds before the
page is refreshed. In this example, it is 5 seconds.
Conclusion: 404s CAN be fun
As you can see, there is more to error pages than the boring, dreaded, stereotypical 404 Not Found page. Website usability extends even beyond your working pages and into the realm of Pages Lost And 404 Not Found! Make it ALL work for you.
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Related Articles and Resources:
Usability Testing
Website Usability and Navigation
Website Content Usability
References:
Jakob Nielsen
For more articles and information please see our website usability resources section.