At Amadesa, we’re constantly coming across new and innovative test ideas that make an impact. Typically, the more interesting tests come from collaborations among our clients, partners, and the Amadesa client services team. In this post, I’d like to focus on one of the last pages considered for testing – the 404 Error page.
People coming to your site might end up on a 404 or Not Found error page at some point during their visit. How they got there… they probably don’t care. Was it the user? Was it the website? For the visitor, blame can be sorted out later, but what they see on that 404 page might determine if they find their way back to your site or leave never to return. Okay, that might be a bit dramatic, but the more visitors that you keep engaged, the more potential customers, leads, etc. that you keep.
But for you, it’s important to understand not only how your visitors got the error message, but also how to guide them back to the information they were seeking. The most common reasons people get to a 404 error page are:
- Mis-typed URL
- Out-of-date bookmark/favorite
- Search engine link that is out-of-date
- Internal broken link that the webmaster hasn’t noticed
You can let the browser’s built-in ability to manage the message and hope the visitor is committed enough to try again, or you can create a great opportunity to let your site’s personality show, politely explain what went wrong, and point them in the right direction.
At the minimum, I’d recommend a link back to the Home Page which signifies ‘starting over’. But you can positively build visitor engagement by keeping the focus refined, using an image, humor, and/or branding elements to deepen engagement and provide a clear course of action.
As an example, by providing a search option to allow the visitor to get right back to finding what they were looking for you’ve turned a potential problem into another sales opportunity. If your visitor is trying to find something specific, by all means the last thing you need is to create any additional obstacles to a complete transaction.
Mountain Equipment Cooperative (MEC) identified negatively performing metrics and decided to launch test variations on their 404 page. The user experience improvement and the actual results that we found on MEC were huge. 3.5% Conversion Rate Lift, and more importantly a 73.6% Lift in Revenue Per Visit. You may have seen this test up on Anne Holland’s http://whichtestwon.com/404/
Want to discuss some creative testing ideas on your site? Have some ideas, and want to discuss next steps? Feel free to drop me an email – ikim@amadesa.com.
Post new comment