Consider this:
How lost is a visitor that come to your 404 and how lost is a visitor that comes to your home page?
Home pages are not what they used to be. Unless you are a big site, people don’t go to your index page and try to find something on it.
Say I’m looking for Strawberry Jam. I know lots and lots of sites about food, but I won’t look strawberry jam in any of them, I’ll go to mother google and ask.
For some searches, like this, I already expect Wikipedia to be the first one, yet, more often than not I turn to Google instead to find it for me.
So, How people go to your 404? By a broken link to something inside your site.
And, how people go to your home page for the first time? Mostly by indication of other site that recommends yours as a whole (a blogroll, a link on a blog comment, etc).
I think there are only two main differences between them are that:
- one is a search bot recommendation and the other is, maybe, a human recomendation
- the visitor on a first case was probably looking for something narrower than your site as a whole
But besides this, an index page and a 404 are pretty much the same, its main mission is to convert a new user to whatever objective your site has and guide her through it.
Won’t you agree?
Guilherme
is a Web Designer focused on web standards and the web ahead of us.
12 Comments
I too wonder about issues such as these. I know that one of my websites is on a few blogrolls out there, and visitors who click through are bound to be confused by a website that has 3 fairly broad categories.
A good web page where people are landing like this needs to be able to quickly size up the website and home in on the information they want. If there are too many clicks to get down to the actual article they want, then you might lose some traffic along the way. On the other hand, if you list too many links or too much information on the index page, the effect can be overwhelming and intimidating to a first-time visitor who just stumbled onto the website.
I think some ideas have come along to help with this. A “popular post” section or a “reader favorites” section can highlight some of your best content and get it out in front of new visitors. For example, I can instantly see on Zo’c that there are articles about web design and Gmail organization, simply from the top posts in the sidebar. I can potentially learn more about the blog and it’s content from scanning the top posts than from trying to take an entire index page.
An index page and a 404 page are an opportunity to entice a reader further into your website. The challenge is in making a clear call to action without overwhelming the visitor.
Guilherme, I think I get your point: each one is a landing page, essentially. The visitor needs certain information immediately: where am I? Why do I care? Where can I go from here? Putting as much effort into a 404 as into the home page makes great sense.
@Patrick -
Exactly!
@Michael Martine -
I’m glad you agree :-)
True, the 404 page is another opportunity to introduce your website or blog to a potential new reader. Just thinking about this might be best accomplished, it occurs to me that it is even more important for a 404 page to deliver the essential message in a concise and intriguing way - and to do it *fast*! Custom error pages don’t cut it if they’re so jam-packed with info that we see ‘404′ in the title bar and click away before the content of the page even come up on display… At least with the home page, you might have another couple of seconds before the visitor gets bored and goes elsewhere, but someone who lands on a 404 is usually on a mission to find a particular bit of information, don’t you think?
@Jen / domestika -
Yes, absolutely!
What Jen mentioned about people clicking away on custom pages never really crossed my mind, that’s a good point. I guess a 404 needs to be uber simple. I always mean to do more work on ours, but it always feels somewhat low priority :-)
@Collis - Hi Collis, welcome to Zo’C.
Neither did I, I’ll have to change mine too.
I think is a common mistake of people to focus on the fact that the page hasn’t been found when, strategically, it would be more appropriate to focus on how to help the user to find whathever (s)he wants.
Oh yeah, maybe I talk a good point… but have I customized all of my own 404 pages yet? Don’t ask! :D
@Jen / domestika -
Oh, well, but if you just came up with the Idea, Lee would recommend you not to act too quickly anyway.
I don’t think I quite understood what you meant until I read people’s comments. But, now that I understand your message, I have to agree with you. And, I also think that Jen made a really good point about load-times for custom 404 pages. I agree with her, as well. :)
If only I had the ability to edit my 404’s. Anyway, great post. And I absolutely adore your layout, sir! Perhaps someday I’ll be able to whip something up similar to this, though right now my web design skills are lacking.
@Adam Snider -
She definitely did!
@John Dykstra -
Well, thanks, I’m flattered. I hope you manage to do what you are willing to do with design as well.
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