Transcript

In this video, I'm going to talk about 404 pages.

A 404 page is an error message saying that the existing page that was requested is not existing anymore.

Now the goal of most of the 404 pages is that we try to convert site visitors who have ended up there into buyers.

So there's a couple of things we can do there.

I want to start with a bad example. On this one says this page is currently unavailable and try it again later. It does not move you any further into the store into the website.

What they have here is the navigation but it does not actively move you forward. And the opportunity that you have to have a website visitor and get them into becoming your potential customers is quite high while they're already on this page.

So instead of filling this message, you should give them a couple of options to stay on the side.

One way as they do here, for instance, is to give them a search bar. So they have a search bar here but as they're the eyes are basically on this message down here

you give them a search bar that they can search for your product.

That is a good start but there's more that you can do.

Now on the store for instance as i still 404 pages cannot be found.

We apologize for that so don't blame the customer that he typed in the wrong url or address apologize that they can't find what they are looking for and then basically tell them what they can do next.

Always be clear and focused right get them focused on what they can do next.

So you know to use the search bar cutoff that would be here, use the menu there or use popular collections below.

So there are four collections. There which was one click would bring them in the right collection.

Another option or another side this also really say that is that i wrote just lost your way perhaps you can help to find you and which box does the same they offer two different collections here where people can just click and then get deeper into the side into the store

misguided does something similar. So also they apologize and then let's get you back on track. And then they have a couple of collections down there and another example here.

Are they have the same they have instead listed on their bestsellers instead of collections.

So there is another way to do that with just products instead of connections.

You can also have just a simple link that takes them back to the homepage.

That might work either now some advanced strategies would be that you offer a discount code as an apology. You would say sorry you can't find the page here is ten percent and continue shopping here or something like that.

Another way is that you capture the email address. Therefor asking them to subscribe for the newsletter which that you might use a leak magnet or a tripwire offer to provide them more value.

So that's a good way to do that i would not primarily try to do this because people might not know what your site is about.

You can edit the 404 pages in your theme either manually and editing before or for not liquid file in your shopify theme. Or you can also use apps from the app store which i have listed in the in a pdf.

That do the same but that's basically for non-developers.

So that's another way to do it.

Now generally you should keep your store clean or 404 pages means if you delete a product or something like that you should have a for water to a new page or collection.

So if possible avoid 404 overall. It still might happen even if somebody's just typing in the wrong url. Then obviously you want to catch these people with these strategies to convert into by herbs.

Now one way to avoid for all force is that you, for instance, use an app like seo manager which i will mention in a later video and they have a link manager.

So what this tool does this app does it scans your whole site for urls. As you can see here so that works automatically in the background.

Once a day you get an email or you just go into the app and then you look for what's the broken parts.

So what was the url or the address that was used to create a 404 page and then you can either decide you want to accept that this url will be forwarded to either the home page or any other page. Or you just want to delete it.

So for instance, if you have a product that's not existing anymore then you might have a different pass here taking them to the collection with similar products.

Or you want to just take them to the home page and then whenever somebody uses this broken path they won't see a 404 page that will be automatically forwarded to whatever url you have in here.

So as the seo manager is a very good way to do that also it will help you with seo rankings because if you have a lot of all four pages Google will probably not like that's it for this video see you next video.