How many people visit your web site but type in the wrong address Youd be surprised! What happens to them if they try to reach a page youve deleted In either event, theyll get what is known as a 404 error. This means you have lost sales - and confidence in your web site, which means theyll never revisit. But there is a solution.
Dont you get frustrated when you visit a web site and all you get is an error telling you the site doesnt exist Do you get annoyed when you see the following message:
The page cannot be found
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
HTTP 404 - File not found
Internet Explorer
Well, guess what, people who visit your web site and get the same error are also annoyed and frustrated with you. And that means theyll probably never visit your site again and have lost confidence in you. Equally, they wont tell their friends about your amazing services or the wonders of your web site. More importantly than losing their visit, however, is the fact that you have lost a sale - and the opportunity for repeat sales. The 404 error is a serious problem and one that needs resolving if your site is to perform at its maximum effect.
Thankfully, there is a solution. The first thing you need to do is to take your main sales web page and ensure that all the links are absolute and not relative. By that I mean you should convert links which say things like salespage.htm to the full address of http://www.yourwebsitename.com/salespage.htm. You should also convert all the image links to their full address - instead of ../images/picture1.htm it should be something like http://wwwyourwebsitename.com/images/picture1.htm.
Having done this you should now go online to your web hosting account. Almost all web hosting companies will allow you to create a custom error page or a custom 404 page. Go to the relevant part of your hosting account and copy the code you have just edited into the appropriate place.
When people type the wrong address, or when you delete a page, people will still be able to get to your site and see a page which could sell to them. To see this in action visit my web site http://www.infoselling.com. After the .com type a slash (/) and then anything you like. Try to avoid typing a word which you think I might have in a page name. Perhaps type nonsense or your own name. See what you get. Now try the same experiment with another web site and see what happens - try it on Ecademy for instance!
Having a custom 404 page which actually sells something is essential. You are losing a substantial number of potential customers if your site does not have a proper page to deliver to people who mistype things or who are trying to access a deleted page.
Graham Jones is a psychologist who has specialized in the way we use the Internet. He is an expert on information products and runs Infoselling.com where you can get a FREE report on how to sell your own infoproducts.
Did you ever wish that you could sit at the feet of an Internet marketing master
Would you like a true expert to cast an eye over your website and give you direct individual feedback Internet marketing Website design Page layout Adsense secrets Revenue maximisation Mailing list techniques and more - the list is limited only by your imagination.
Until a few days ago all of that would have seemed impossible - just too good to be true. But not now! Not anymore!
Last night, I spent half an hour deep in conversation with Joel Comm- a genuine expert on internet marketing, and the spin off benefits are already beginning to show on my website.
Joel Comm is a hero to many in the world of Internet sales and Internet marketing. He got started with computers and the Internet twenty years ago and has built up a substantial (and very profitable) empire ever since. Ten years ago he launched WorldVillage.com - a family friendly portal to the web that now gets many thousands of visitors every day. Lately, hes better known as the author of the book called: What Google Never Told You about Making Money With Adsense - the working bible for those who aim to make money from Google adverts on their website.
Until now, if you wanted Internet marketing help from Joel Comm you could read his .
Until now, if you wanted Joels help with Internet marketing you could subscribe to his newsletter or visit his website regularly.
But now gold mine! Now you can speak with Joel face to face and pick his Internet marketing brain in depth and, even better, on a truly one to one basis.
True to his past tendencies, Joel is again reinventing himself and launching off in a new direction - he has set up a specific Internet marketing consultancy. The details will be coming soon on his website. I was lucky enough to tap in at a very early stage after seeing details in his regular newsletter.
Heres how it worked:
I contacted Joel by email and told him that I was interested in a one to one consultation session. I paid his fee by Paypal and he got back to me within an hour or so with a simple questionnaire asking what topics I wanted to discuss. I gave him the details of my website and told him what I hoped to achieve with it. Joel visited the site and made notes prior to our talk - looking specifically at the points I had raised.
We consulted our schedules and worked out the best time to talk - nighttime for me in the UK, mid-afternoon for Joel in the USA. So, cold beer in hand, I sat down with a large sheet of paper and picked up the phone. Joel answered first ring and we were off on what - for me at least - was something of an adventure.
There are no rules. Youre in charge of the conversation and can take it in any direction you wish. Ten discussion areas quickly or one in great depth - its up to you. Joels depth of knowledge allowed him to respond in depth to anything I could throw at him.
Thirty minutes later and my head was buzzing with ideas and full of fresh inspiration for driving my fledgling website to a new level.
We had spoken about Google Adsense layout and placement, about building traffic and the merits of the various toolkit packages available, about how and where to advertise to gain the most exposure and - finally - about where to go for help with website redesign or development.
I gained a dozen great tips but most of all I gained the confidence and the inspiration to push things forward.
Joel Comm may well be an Internet millionaire by now. I certainly wont be - but Im going to have great fun trying!
Get in touch with him (or even if you feel happy with his work) I promise you wont regret a minute of it.
Dr Gordon Cameron is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Hes a specialist in and in
His website contains a large volume of easy to read information for all those who suffer from joint pain, muscle pain, back pain and arthritis.