It’s all about taking something ordinary and making it better. That’s how to keep your business alive, on the edge and profitable. So when I find a little tweak here and there and get all excited about it, most people just think I’m a freak. But little things add up to big results over time! This one little tweak will make me several thousand dollars this year.
The most problematic page on your website
What’s the most problematic page on your website? It’s your 404 page. For those of you who don’t know what a 404 is, it’s the page that shows up if someone visits a page that’s no longer there. Or perhaps they typed in the url incorrectly, etc. In any case, your visitor is trying to visit a page that doesn’t exist. When that happens, they land automatically on your 404 error page.
Most of you haven’t even visited your 404 page to see what’s up. I encourage you to do so; it’s probably pretty ugly. It probably says something like “The page your trying to visit doesn’t exist. I am a cold, computer-generated page built for the purpose of alienating you, making you feel like a dope and causing you to leave my website quickly, never to return.” Something like that. That’s NOT how you want to roll, trust me.
Visit your 404 page today, and see how stupid it is. Make it better.
How to make your 404 page rock
If you’re an enlightened webmaster (there are lots of you out there), you have probably already customized your 404 page. Instead of the stock 404 page, you’ve made your page more inviting. You explain the page they’re trying to visit is not available, and instead why don’t you try visiting one of these other articles…and you provide some links to other articles on your site. You might even offer them a search field, so they can find the article they intended on visiting in the first place.
Not bad. You can do better though!
Whether you have a customized 404 page or not, I recommend turning your 404 page into a squeeze page. I did this last week, and it’s been bringing in new subscribers to my site every day. It’s not a lot, but it’s steady. I’ve had maybe 20 new opt-ins in the past week. Not bad if you ask me 🙂
Doesn’t it make SENSE to take the ugliest page on your website and turn it into an asset which consistently brings new subscribers into the fold? Before I did it, I questioned whether there is some unspoken rule against this or something. I simply do not know why no one does this. It works great for me; I recommend giving it a shot on your own site.
The details
All I did was take my 404 page and put an optin on it. The verbiage I used was:
Get Everything
EVERYTHING is available to subscribers! Make sure to opt in here to get access to EVERYTHING on the site. Subscribing is:
1. Free
2. Awesome
3. High value
Then I created a plain opt-in box, and that’s it.
I hope you’ll test it for yourself and let me know what you think. If you need any help implementing it, I’m here to help you with that also. Isn’t web marketing fun? Rock on 😉