What are the most useful features of effective 404 files not found error pages?

Question

When a user lands on page 404 "File not found", most likely this is not what they were looking for. Here you have the opportunity to turn a dead end into a resource that will help your visitor find what they were looking for.

If you were going to create a perfect page with a 404 file error not found, what would it do? What are the most useful features of effective 404 files not found error pages? Are there any strong examples?

Answer 1

• Search
• Suggested pages (search results for words in a path not found)
• Aggregate global resources or possibly a brief sitemap
• Tags / categories / any of your quick navigation features
• If the structure is a hierarchy and the path not found is somewhere below the top level, make sure that taylor is higher where the user is in the hierarchy (e.g. / widgets / some-widget → Inside search / widgets, widgets offered, etc. .).

Answer 2

I would just make it as easy and fast as possible, with notable links to the site map and homepage. As soon as I understand that I hit 404, I usually dive for the back button or just try to get to the website’s homepage if I'm interested in everything that I was looking for. I almost never read what was on page 404. It may not be a good habit, but I'm sure most visitors to the site are as impatient as I am.

Answer 3

If the site had a recent redesign, and I could not prevent a 404 redirect, I would probably include a short redesign message and tips on how they can find what they were looking for in the new structure.

Answer 4

If you are worried about maintaining a list of dead links (i.e. the address of the page you used to host that is now deleted / renamed / moved), you can often offer the right page to a user who follows a very old link from outside your site.

In some cases, you can give a short text explanation to say why this page no longer exists. Or, perhaps you can find part of the file path, which allows you to immediately catch 100 different dead links.

I did it successfully for a small website, so I don’t know how much work it will support data for a larger website, or where several people delete / rename / move files.

Answer 5

First of all, with regard to dead links that were once valid, the most effective 404 is actually 301 permanent redirects to the new URL. Any website redesign should map old URLs to new ones, and any CMS that allows the user to edit the page URLs should automatically set this when the URL changes.

Otherwise, it’s a good solution to present the user with search results from your site based on keywords present in the components of the URL.

These are universal solutions, but I'm sure you can come up with your own specific solutions for your site / webapp, for example. A wiki-style site can display a blank editable page so that the user can create the page at this URL.