A Little Fun with Top 404 Error Pages

I’m sure we can all agree just how frustrating a user experience can be when encountering the dreaded, 404 Error Page. Unfortunately, these pages tend to be useless and plain old boring. Although a “Fail Whale” may not fit your Company’s image, when possible, spruce up your 404 Error Page a bit and make it more engaging and entertaining. The very thought of encountering a 404 Error Page is disappointing as it is for users, so why not try to give them a laugh to calm the situation?

Mashable previously featured a handful of fun examples of 404 Error Pages. Below are my top 10 (in no particular order):

1. Center’d
2. Itchy Robot!
3. Urban Outfitters
4. Apparent Etch
5. Adham Dannaway
6. iContact
7. iWearYourShirt
8. SLBJ Women's Conference
9. Zappos
10. Bit.ly

I hope you had a laugh or two with the above list. Do you have any fun 404 Error Pages to add to the list?

Google Webmaster Tools Enhances 404 Pages

Google Webmaster Tools recently added an experimental new feature called Enhance 404 pages, to help webmasters simply create a custom 404 page by embedding a widget on their custom 404 pages. The widget suggests other URLs that exist that are relevant to what the user may be looking for. While Google Webmaster Tools says it is not always accurate as far as what website it suggests, I think it's better than not giving you any options of where to go, such as a default 404 page.

Here is what the widget would output on a page if implemented. It will suggest going back to the homepage, sitemap or searching for a specific query.

If you don't have Google Webmaster Tools for your website, you should give it a try. It's free and you can view a lot of information to make sure the pages on your website are being crawled in Google. You can also submit a sitemap to help Google go through all the pages of your site for indexing as well.

Website Launch Checklist

Whether you're launching a website for the first time or going through a redesign, there's some things you should do for a site launch:

• Setup 301 Redirects - only applies to a website redesign and ensures that the search engines know where the old pages are moving to. The process involved in setting up a 301 redirect is dependent on whether you have a Apache or IIS (Windows) server.
• Setup a Custom 404 Page - When you're going through a site redesign, it's a smart tactic to use a custom 404 page to catch any visitors that your 301 redirects missed. Just like a 301 redirect, you'll either need to setup your custom 404 on your Apache or IIS server. If you're not sure what to put on your custom 404 page, check out Apple.com. They have a great example of a custom 404 page.
• Check for Broken Links - make sure that all the links on your site are working. You can use a link checker to find any broken links.
• Setup an XML Site Map - will provide an easy way for search engines crawl the pages on your website. Google offers a simple XML sitemap generator. Then register at Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer and submit your XML sitemap. After verifying your website, both search engines can use your XML sitemap as a guide to crawl your website.
• Setup Analytics - make sure that you're tracking your visitors from day one. If you're already using analytics on the old website, make sure that during the transition the code gets placed on the new site. If you don't have any analytics, sign up for Google Analytics.

And don't forget, once the website is launched, you're going to want to launch your internet marketing campaign...but that's a checklist for another day.