What are 404 Error, and How can you Fix them?
When you click a link, you’ll get a 404 error message that doesn’t go to the page you’re looking for, but to another that says the page doesn’t exist.
Error 404. Page Not Found.
While you may not trust it, having too several of them in your store can be detrimental to your web positioning (if visitors can’t find the page they are looking for and can leave the store, it isn’t easy to make sales)
And that’s exactly why today’s post shows you:
How To Spot 404 Errors.
Different ways to solve them.
Here’s how to optimize your website so that you don’t lose leads in this case.
Let us begin.
What Is A 404 Error?
Let’s start with the explanation:
If one of your harvests is out of stock or has stopped selling and forgets to disable the URL, visitors will see a 404 error.
Follow a 404 in your e-commerce
You might be thinking, “What’s wrong? Customers hit the back button, exit the error page, and they’re done.”
Well, not exactly.
The truth is that if your online store shows too many 404 errors, you can have several negative consequences:
1. Positioning In Google
According to Google itself, the presence of 404 pages initially does not affect the ranking.
However, if your tracking tools detect multiple 404s on your website, they may think the website is not well maintained or out of date and may display them less often to avoid a bad user experience.
Do you remember this concept?
The bounce rate, or bounce rate, is the number of hundred people who left a website without clicking a single time.
Measure user satisfaction, and they will walk away if they don’t like what they see.
Google takes this rate into account when evaluating your ranking.
2. User Experience
We have already talked about:
The aim is for visitors to feel so comfortable that they buy as many products as possible. However, if users find a lot of 404 pages, the experience is ruined.
This negative mood can also lead to a loss of trust and credibility for your customers.
As we just saw, when customers get tired of the bugs, the bounce rate increases and their rankings can suffer.
3. Loss Of Sales
When potential customers leave your website because of a 404 error, you miss out on a potential sale compared to what we were talking about.
In general, users don’t waste time looking through a 404 error page. You leave the site and find a competitor.
Given the difficulty of getting qualified traffic for your e-commerce, you can’t afford to lose a visitor.
Later, we’ll go over some tricks you can use to modify your error pages and create interactions. Before we get there, let’s take a look at how to identify and fix 404 errors in your online store.
Why 404 Errors Can Occur In Your Online Store
As mentioned above, the main reason a product is out of stock or no longer sold. As a result, the relevant URLs were not updated or redirected.
But other reasons can generate more than 404 errors in a company.
1. Problems With Your Web Server
If your server is malfunctioning or has connectivity issues, it will generate a 404 error for every page on your website that is not available.
The solution is to communicate with your provider and be patient. Choosing a good hosting service for your store will make incident handling faster and less painful.
2. Error Due To Deleted Page
Even if you have configured a URL so that Search Console does not index, it can still appear in the search engine. The truth is, sometimes it takes Google a while to remove it.
There are 2 ways to solve this problem:
If the old page has been permanently removed, we’ll show you an optimized 404 page (don’t worry, we’ll explain how below).
Remember, having a 404 error page doesn’t have to be a big deal, so you don’t panic.
3. Changes In The Name Of A Page
The URL of a page corresponds to its ID. Even if you change one letter, Google will consider it a unique new page.
To resolve this, create a 301 redirect from the wrong URL to the correct one.
In this way, you do not lose the previous page’s ranking, since this redirect transfers the positioning authority of the last page to the new one.
4. What If The Customer Makes A Mistake And Not Your Company?
This situation makes sense to offer different solutions so that the potential customer doesn’t leave immediately. So you can still sell:
Refresh – Explain how to reload the website by updating it or clicking F5.
Check the URL – Ask them to verify that the URL was entered correctly (especially if entered manually).
Professional Search Engine – Encourage customers to use the store’s search engine to make it easier for them to find what they are observing. If you use Doofinder, they will find it immediately.
Shows links to the most popular categories.
Show a button to return to the home page; That way, you can start over.
These ideas can be added to your custom error page just like Makari (we’ll see more examples too).
How to recognize a 404 error in your store
As an online store owner, you need to know whether you have a lot of 404 errors, but you can’t visit each page of your website individually.
1. Google Search Console
If you’re not using Google Search Console, it’s time to do it.
This powerful and free tool from Google is very efficient (among other things) at detecting the same broken links that the search engine.
And that’s not the only thing it can help you with
2. W3c Link Checker
By entering the main URL of your online business, this tool will analyze each link and give you a report of broken links so that you can fix them.
3. Dead Link Checker
Like the primary tool and free, Dead Link Checker offers a more visually appealing report that analyzes your broken links.
You can even configure it to receive periodic reports by email.
4. Broken Link Checker
This is a plugin for WordPress that you can use to identify broken links in your store.
Once you have, it installed
It’s mighty, but it uses a lot of web resources.
Use your 404 pages to drive engagement (with examples)
Customizing your 404 error page is a good idea for several reasons:
Hence, Google bots can go beyond your 404 error page and keep crawling your e-commerce store.
To convince your audience not to back off and keep your bounce rate (and sales) down.
As you can see, it is fine worth taking the time to customize your error page.
We Are Successful In Sharing Some Tips And Showing You Some Examples To Inspire You.
1. It Should Be A Simple, Fast, And Easy-To-Use Site
You’re telling your customers there’s a bug: don’t clutter the page with information that will cause it to load more slowly.
A simple but clear message will suffice.
Of course, you should always show them a way to get back to your website. Read how Volkswagen leaves a call to action to get to the home page.
If you don’t give your customers options, they’ll leave your website by closing the window, and you can say goodbye to the sale.
2. Use Humor
How about looking for empathy and making customers laugh because of a mistake?
It doesn’t have to be involved, watch our customer Primor do it.
Of course, they also offer links to get from the error page to other categories.
3. Use A Search Engine On The Error Pages
We’ve seen earlier, the most common reason people land on a 404 error page on an e-commerce website is that the product has stopped selling or the card is incorrectly redirected.
If the customer is looking for a specific product, you can give them the option to search for it directly on the error page to make the buying process easier.
Also Read: What is a 301 Redirect?
