In this next installment of list building tips, I'm going to cover an area that almost nobody takes advantage of - 404 pages. For those of you who don't know what they are, I'll explain them. For those of you who do and might be wondering how you could ever build a list off of a 404 page, you might just want to keep reading. I promise you that it WILL be a real eye opener.
Let's start off with exactly what a 404 page is for those of you who don't know. A 404 page is one that a visitor will see when they don't get the page of your domain that they're looking for. Now, there can be a number of reasons why this could happen, such as you deleting it without realizing it. Maybe you changed the permalink structure of a site. I could go on for days about what causes 404 errors but the bottom line is this. A visitor tried to access a page on your site, couldn't, and was greeted by an ugly "page could not be found" error which causes them to just move on to something else.
That's a GREAT way to lose prospects.
Okay, so what CAN we do about 404 pages? Well, we can't completely avoid them popping up. Even if we've done nothing wrong and the visitor simply typed in the wrong URL of the page they were looking for (yes, it happens) they're still going to get those errors. However, what we CAN do is customize our 404 pages so that when a visitor DOES get one to pop up, they have the chance to do more than just go away.
How do we do this?
A simple message that says, "Sorry, the page you're looking for doesn't seem to be here. Maybe you'd like to sign up for my free newsletter below... " just might get somebody who would have normally just moved on to do something else, to sign up for your newsletter. It certainly can't hurt to try and what does it cost you? A few minutes of your time to design a page?
Yes, you SHOULD try to make the 404 page as eye catching as possible. Make it humorous even. After all, the visitor isn't finding what he's looking for and is therefore probably at least a little annoyed. A cute little graphic of maybe some guy scratching his head wondering where the page went to just might get a chuckle or two.
For those of you who don't know how to create and setup your hosting to handle a 404 page, it's really very simple.
Step One - Create the page and save it with an obvious name. Something like 404.html will do fine.
Step Two - Edit your,htaccess file by adding the following line:
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
And that's it. That's all there is to it.
This way, if a visitor to your site doesn't get the page they're looking for, they at least get a page that might have some meaning to them and JUST might get you another list member.
Try it. You might JUST be surprised by the results.
To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim
Want more great list building tips? Check out my review of Paul Myers' Profit Plan VI at Profit Plan VI and pick up 162 ways to build a large and responsive list.
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