First, you need a good 'Image Editor'. It's simply a program which can resize, crop (trim), reduce quality and most importantly, change 'file extension (image type) of any image, among many other nifty things. Your standard MS Paint® program is useful, but it has many limitations and is not really good for 'editing' images in real sense. For my money, which is somewhere around 'free', you can't go wrong with 'Irfanview'.

Irfanview is an excellent 'Freeware' Image Editor which can be downloaded and installed through their website [url]http://www.irfanview.com[/url]. In my opinion, only thing it can't do is change file extension of an 'animated gif' (the moving images that you see everywhere), which I think is beyond almost any program.

Now you're armed with what you need to make your images work for you, instead of you building your website around your images and their 'foibles'. If you have a bitmap image that is 500 Kb, you can turn it into a jpeg of approximately 25 percent of file size, or even smaller, there are many variables. In some cases, gif and png files can be even smaller than that. You can make file even more manageable by reducing quality of image by, say 10 percent (hardly noticeable in many cases) and cut file size by up to 30 percent again.

You can crop (trim) edges or parts of image, which don't need to be shown to reduce file size. You can convert to 'grayscale' (a black and white photo type image) if color isn't too important and save a lot of file size. You can reduce physical size of image (although it won't change file size, it can make your images fit where they don't want to), keeping original ratio of length to width or 'stretching'. You can even 'capture images' (take screenshots).

You can also invert and reverse, turn 90 degrees left or right etc. Basically, if you can conceive of it, within reason, you can do it. So hopefully, now many beginners and budding webmasters won't be a slave to their images any longer, accepting less than they really want because they have to cater for characteristics of an image. Now images will speak a thousand words, instead of taking a thousand years to load.

3) Include a list of suggested links of pages that might hold information they are looking for, after studying your log files to see which errors are made most.

4) If you can, have your server automatically run a spelling check on requested URL to search for any spelling mistakes and suggest possible corrections, and make those suggestions direct links to those pages.

5) Lastly, have your error page contain a search field so as a last resort your user can search your site for what they were looking for.

“Area 404”, a website dedicated to creativity and usability of error pages, has performed what they call a “highly scientific” survey of 1375 people regarding usability of error pages. Their survey consisted of one question:

When you encounter a 404 do you: A) Hit back button and forget about it. B) Try to get to homepage to locate missing page. C) Write to Webmaster. D) Weep uncontrollably.

The results were: 36.92% hit back button and forgot about it. 20.37% tried to get to homepage to locate missing page. Only 2.82% actually took time to write to Webmaster (Webmasters take note of this). And 39.88% of those surveyed said they wept uncontrollably.

What have we learned from this ultra-scientific survey? People do not like error pages! But if you can make your page catchy and helpful, you will keep people on your site.

Area 404 has their own guidelines to what makes a good 404 page. In addition to ones listed by Jakob Nielsen, they add that you could include a link to contact Webmaster to inform them of error. They definitely suggest that you at very least include a link to your homepage.

Make Sure They See Your Error Page

Sometimes you may find that Internet Explorer browser does not display your own homemade error page and instead insists on displaying it’s own friendly version. Though their version may be nicer to look at than classic “404 Not Found” page, it is not as helpful or useful for your customers as your own page, so you will want to make sure your page is one that is displayed.

You can force Internet Explorer to stop ignoring your page and start displaying it by making sure it is greater than 512 bytes, not including graphics. At that size, IE will not ignore it and will display your page instead of its standard one. 512 bytes gives you a great deal of space to work with, which you can fill up with text on actual page or in comments in source code.

Examples

Ok, so we know what sort of information you should include on your error pages to make them usable for your visitors. But what creative ways can you make your 404 pages a pleasure rather than a pain? Here are some examples from Area 404:

404 Something went screwy!

I have all good intentions that you should never, ever see this page, but best-laid schemes of mice and men oft' go astray...uh...in this case, it's URL you were attempting to access that seems to have gone astray.

If link you followed resides on foo.net, please send e-mail to example@foo.net. You can return to familiar territory by using your browser's BACK button, or start fresh at front door and perhaps you'll find what you were looking for. www.foo.net

Of course if you just found this page because you're hooked on 404's, you'll enjoy following these other links instead: 404 Error 404 Research Lab

To see other examples of how creative 404 pages can be, either purposefully go out and look for them by mistyping URLs willy-nilly, or check out Area 404’s treasure trove of examples at http://www.plinko.net/404/area404.asp.

Redirects

Now there is an alternative to displaying an error page. If you find there is a page that is consistently getting mistyped, or if you have moved a page that you know many people will be trying to view, instead of just showing them an error page you can automatically redirect them to correct page. You can use a 404 in correlation with redirection, by having a 404 page that informs you visitor “We’re sorry, that page has moved. In a few second you will be automatically redirect to correct page.” That makes it easy for your visitors, since they just have to sit back and wait, rather than having to click links to find new page themselves. Have that page be displayed for about 4 or 5 seconds, and then have server send them to right page.

The HTML for redirects is simple. It will tell server to automatically “refresh” page, but by refreshing it will bring up a different URL. Here is code:

The “CONTENT” is amount of seconds before page is refreshed. In this example, it is 5 seconds.

Conclusion: 404s CAN be fun

As you can see, there is more to error pages than boring, dreaded, stereotypical 404 Not Found page. Website usability extends even beyond your working pages and into realm of Pages Lost And 404 Not Found! Make it ALL work for you.