I have come to the end of my blog series on how the major UK supermarkets use custom 404 pages to improve the user experience.

The supermarket that started this off was Asda, when I stumbled across the fact that the main Asda web site did not have a custom 404 [...]]]>

Example of www.asda.co.uk's 404 page

I have come to the end of my blog series on how the major UK supermarkets use custom 404 pages to improve the user experience.

The supermarket that started this off was Asda, when I stumbled across the fact that the main Asda web site did not have a custom 404 page and took me to the horrible server default 404 page. At the time I couldn’t believe it, I thought all major retailers would have had this basic principle of web development covered and be doing a good job of 404 pages.

Then I realised that Asda had quite a few other web sites so I started investigating those, found more web sites with no custom 404 pages and the list grew and grew until I had 25 Asda web sites in total, 9 of which do not have a custom 404 page at all.

If Asda are that bad, how do the other supermarkets compare?

The obvious next choice was Tesco. I started investigating their web sites with some trepidation – if Asda have 25 web sites then how many are Tesco going to have? Thankfully, the total is ‘only’ 14, 3 of which have no custom 404 page, including Tesco Direct, which is a huge online catalogue web site that would really benefit from a decent 404 page, and 6 have poor 404 pages, including Tesco Insulation, Tesco Diets, Tesco Energy and Tesco Travel Store, which were all terrible.

To wrap up the series I travelled around the web sites for Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Morrison’s, Somerfield and Co-Operative and so covered all the major UK supermarkets.

The table below shows each supermarket, how many web sites they have in total and then the state of their 404 pages. I have included a percentage figure at the foot of the table, showing how many web sites of that supermarket’s total have good 404 pages, as a percentage.

Supermarkets 404 page use

You will see that Asda and Tesco are pretty close, with about a fifth of their web sites having what I would term as good 404 pages. Sainsbury’s are worse with only 11% (1 out of 9) whilst Waitrose has a quarter of its sites in the ‘Good’ category (1 out of 4).

There is also a figure for the percentage of web sites from that supermarket’s total without custom 404 pages altogether. Asda is pretty poor with 36%, which is 9 of its 25 web sites and Sainsbury’s is also lacking in this area with 44% of its sites without a custom 404 page, or 4 out of 9. Tesco comes next with 3 of its 14 sites without a custom 404 page, or 21%. Finally, Morrison’s single web site does not have a custom 404 page so they score 100% in this aspect.

Conclusion

The main thing to draw from all this is that the overall quality when it comes to the use of 404 pages in UK supermarkets is very poor. I had expected a great deal more from these major companies that obviously spend a huge amount of time, effort and expense on their multitude of web sites.

Whilst some of the supermarket sites do genuinely have good 404 pages, a lot are terrible or simply non-existent. The subject of 404 pages is possibly on the dull side for many (the novelty is wearing thin for me too after this study) but my belief is that they really do add to the user experience and a bad or non-existent 404 page really can have a negative effect on this experience.

Users can hit a 404 error for many reasons and I have discussed previously why a custom 404 page is a good idea. When a user does come across a 404, the important bit is what that user does next. What the owner of the web site should want them to do is to stay on their site, continue browsing until they reach the final goal for that web site – usually ordering something or making an enquiry. How does the user do that if all the 404 page shows is the server default version or does not help them in any way?

It is like reaching a crossroads with no signpost or map or hitting a dead end and having to go back the way you came, neither of which are good experiences for the user.

Supermarkets, and their in-house teams or external digital agencies, really need to look at the quality of the 404 pages that they are producing, often as part of a large scale redesign, and determine whether the result is good for the user or not. In the majority of cases at present, it is not.

The third part of my series on looking at supermarkets web sites to see how they use 404 pages to direct users if they get lost and so make sure that the overall user experience is a decent one.

The first two parts investigated Asda and Tesco who, between them, have almost 40 [...]]]>

Sainsburys Home Page

The third part of my series on looking at supermarkets web sites to see how they use 404 pages to direct users if they get lost and so make sure that the overall user experience is a decent one.

The first two parts investigated Asda and Tesco who, between them, have almost 40 web sites. Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Morrison’s, Somerfield and the Co-Op have a lot less and so this post should be a bit shorter as a result.

I’ll just quickly mention that if you are not sure what 404 pages are and why web sites should have them (especially major UK retailers) then you can read my introduction to 404 pages here.

Of the 5 supermarkets that we are going to have a look at today, let’s start with Sainsbury’s.

Sainsbury’s

A total of 9 web sites for Sainsbury’s with a couple of smaller sites crawling out of the woodwork.

Sainsburys – www.sainsburys.co.uk

The Sainsbury's 404 page - not a good example

This is a strange one indeed, the main Sainsburys web site presents different messages or outcomes depending on the URL that you are having a problem with. For instance, if you go to http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/testing in the root of the directory structure then you are redirected back to the home page, which is not always helpful but isn’t as big a deal as if you try http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/sol/testing, which gives you a bit ‘Not Found’ error message, completed unbranded and unhelpful for the user.

Finally, if you try going to an incorrect product page such as http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/sol/shop/home_and_garden/cookware/testing.html, then you get a different type of server default 404 page, which is also completely unbranded, unhelpful and doesn’t present the Sainsbury’s web site in a good light.

J Sainsbury Corporate Site – www.jsainsbury.co.uk

The corporate site leads the way with its 404 page use

The corporate site offers a much better 404 page that presents the user with a search first of all and links underneath to a site index and other main pages within the web site. This is kept within the main navigation and footer and is overall a pretty good 404 page. Why can’t the main Sainsbury’s web site be similar to this?

Sainsburys Energy – www.sainsburysenergy.com

The Sainsburys Energy 404 page is very poor...and EDF branded

Sainsburys Energy is provided by EDF Energy and the 404 page is completely EDF Energy branded and totally unhelpful. The user is presented with a logo, an ‘Our Apologies’ heading and 2 reasons why you may have be shown this page, either the user mistyped or the page doesn’t exist.

There are no links to further pages or even back to the home page, no search, no sitemap, no customer service numbers or email addresses, etc. The logo does link to the Sainsburys Energy home page and users do often try clicking on a logo but this 404 page could be greatly improved.

Sainsburys Bank – www.sainsburysbank.co.uk

Sainsbury's Bank offers a good example of a 404 page

Branded as Sainsburys Finance, this 404 page is straightforward enough with the customary error message (that runs outside of the its container on the page) and then links to the home page, site map page and then links to their main product areas. Tucked away in the top left are Sainsbury’s Quick Links, which upon clicking opens a panel laid out like a sitemap page.

Sainsbury’s Business Direct – www.sainsburysbusinessdirect.co.uk

Not any better than a server default 404 page

To be frank, a horrible 404 page. This one tells you the page is not found and gives you a link back to the home page. No explanation or message plus completely unbranded, which makes it look like a server default page although I don’t think it is. This one needs a lot more effort to become a decent 404 page.

Sainsbury’s Gifts – www.sainsburysgifts.co.uk

Sainsbury's Gifts - same terribleness as with Business Direct

The Sainsbury’s Gifts web site looks pretty similar to the Business Direct site and, surprise surprise, the 404 page is similarly rubbish. Unfortunately, it is exactly the same as the poor Business Direct 404 page.

Sainsbury’s Calais – www.sainsburyscalais.co.uk

If I can't find what I'm looking for, I won't be going to Sainsbury's in Calais

A pre-order web site for getting your wine and beer sorted before you get to Calais. I noticed a couple of problems with the web site when I had a quick look around and was not surprise to find that there is no custom 404 page, just the server default kind.

Sainsbury’s Compare and Save – www.sainsburyscompareandsave.com

Sainsbury's Compare and Save's poor attempt at a 404 page

Sainsbury’s Compare and Save compares broadband, digital and phone packages and is powered by Simplify Digital. I was worried about this web site, as it doesn’t even have a title tag specified for the home page but there is a custom 404 page. However, all the 404 page consists of a large, ‘Whoops! We can’t find the page you are looking for.’ with nothing further. Whoops indeed.

If I try going to an incorrectly typed URL such as http://www.sainsburyscompareandsave.com/testing.aspx, I get a server error page, Whoops again.

Sainsbury’s Little Ones – www3.sainsburys.co.uk/littleones

Sainsbury's Little Ones generic 404 page not good enough

The Little Ones web site is a standalone web site even though its URL is on the back of the main Sainsburys domain name. The 404 page is unbranded and gives no less that 6 reasons why a user may have found it. There is a link to the Little Ones home page and I am sure that the final message of, ‘If difficulties persist, please contact the System Administrator of this site.’ is useful to somebody but not me. How would I go about doing that then?

Waitrose

Waitrose operate a total of 4 web sites that I could find without heading off into John Lewis Land.

Waitrose – www.waitrose.com

Waitrose has an odd 404 page

A slightly odd 404 page, you get a nicely short and apologetic message with a request that you use the search facility (which you have to find yourself) or the site map. The site map is underneath but this is quite a lot of white space and so if you were viewing the Waitrose site on a netbook or small laptop (such as a Macbook like I was using) then you can easily miss the fact that the sitemap is actually present just underneath where you are viewing.

Waitrose Deliver – www.waitrosedeliver.com

Waitrose Deliver delivers hard to read 404 page

The Waitrose Deliver 404 page is not great, you get a hard to read error message in light grey text on a white background, an error message with a link to the home page plus a customer services telephone number and an email address. No navigation, no link to a sitemap, no search and no footer links plus did I mention the text was a bit difficult to read?

Waitrose Wine Direct – www.waitrosewine.com

Waitrose Wine Direct offers mature and full bodied 404 page

Waitrose’s Wine web site’s 404 page requests that you try using their search in the top right hand corner of the screen, provides links to the home page and to the customer services section and asks if you type in the URL correctly. The main navigation and footer navigation is all present too, which means that the user should have a fair chance of finding what they were looking for. A good 404 page.

Waitrose Jobs – www.waitrosejobs.com

Waitrose Jobs has a non-existent 404 page

This John Lewis branded web site does not have a custom 404 page and as such delivers a nasty server default page if a user gets lost, which is of no benefit at all.

Morrisons

Just the single web site for Morrison’s so let’s hope they make a good stab of it.

Morrisons – www.morrisons.co.uk

Morrisons 404 page - what 404 page?

Oh dear, no custom 404 page on their web site, if a user stumbles across a page not found error they will hit a default server 404 page. In my view that is offering a terrible user experience.

Somerfield

Not one of the major supermarket retailers and recently merged with the Co-Operative, Somerfield have just the one web site.

Somerfield – www.somerfield.co.uk

Somerfield's 404 page is a pretty good one

A straightforward 404 page set within the site so the main header including site navigation is shown across the top and the footer is displayed underneath. The 404 message itself is fairly simplistic with links to the home page and, for some reason, to the Somerfield Corporate site, which now redirects you to the Co-Operative’s Group portion of their site, as the 2 companies have merged.

The Co-Operative

Similar to Somerfield, perhaps that is why they have just merged, the Co-Operative has a single web site.

The Co-Operative – www.co-operative.coop

The Co-Op dishes out a decent 404 page

A fairly good 404 page, tells you why you have been presented with the page and what you can do about it including links to the site map, a link to the home page and also telling you to try the search on the home page. If that wasn’t enough there is a telephone number and a customer services email address.

There aren’t many 404 pages that we’ve seen that are better than this in my view.

Conclusions

A mixed bag of supermarkets gives us changeable results in the area of 404 pages. Sainsbury’s had 2 good 404 pages (on the Corporate site and Bank web sites) but the rest were pretty poor including their main web site. Waitrose wasn’t that much better with their Wine site being the highlight whilst Morrison’s was a complete non event. Somerfield’s 404 page was straightforward and the Co-Op’s was pretty good.

Overall, a sense of disappointment (again) with the major supermarkets and how lacking their sites are when it comes to the best practice use of something as simple and basic as a 404 page. Full marks go to the Co-Operative.

This is the second in my series of looking at supermarkets and how they use 404 pages to direct users if they get lost and so improve the overall user experience.

The supermarket that started this series off was Asda and the poor or nonexistent 404 pages that I found across a lot [...]]]>

Tesco.com web site

This is the second in my series of looking at supermarkets and how they use 404 pages to direct users if they get lost and so improve the overall user experience.

The supermarket that started this series off was Asda and the poor or nonexistent 404 pages that I found across a lot of their sites. You can read that post here and if you do it may help you to understand the context of this one.

If you are not sure what 404 pages are and why web sites should have them (especially major UK retailers) then you can read my introduction to 404 pages here.

So last time it was Asda and this time around we are reviewing Tesco’s web sites, the biggest UK supermarket chain.

Tesco’s Web Sites

Tesco doesn’t have as many individual web sites as Asda with around 14 in total, as opposed to Asda’s collection of 25 web sites. I have included each of Tesco’s 14 web sites in the analysis below.

No 404 Page

As with 9 of Asda’s web sites, there are a good proportion of the Tesco sites that do not have a custom 404 page. This means that when a user hits the 404 page they will just see a very unfriendly and unbranded server default 404 page, which is of practically no use to a lost user at all.

The server default 404 page was true of the following Tesco web sites:

1. Tesco Direct

Tesco Direct 404 page

Tesco Direct is a large online catalogue web site with a huge range of products. It is likely that an incorrect link or mistyped URL could result in the user hitting a 404 page, which is an unsightly Internet Information Server (IIS) server default page. Consider the Asda Direct web site from my previous analysis, which shows just how a nice custom 404 page could work for an online catalogue web site with main sections broken down into categories, almost like a site map. This gives users the ability to head to the next most relevant destination after they hit a 404 page rather than just an unfriendly default page.

2. Tesco Get Involved

Tesco Get Involved 404 page

This is Tesco’s community web site, demonstrating what Tesco is involved in, their charity work and urging us to volunteer. The web site uses the standard IIS 404 page but if you mistyped the URL so perhaps tried http://www.tescogetinvolved.com/Homes.aspx instead of http://www.tescogetinvolved.com/Home.aspx you get an ever more horrible ‘Server error in ‘/’ Application’. Sounds horrendous doesn’t it?

3. The Nutri Centre (Tesco)

Nutri Centre 404 page

The Nutri Centre have several stores within Tesco Extra’s up and down the country. Their web site, however, does not have a custom 404 page and is another odd result if you mistype a URL. For instance, if I mistype the About Us page URL and enter http://www.nutricentre.com/t-abouts.aspx instead of the correct URL of http://www.nutricentre.com/t-about.aspx, I get a page with the content area blank telling me, ‘you are here’ without any message to say what has gone wrong.

In my experience users do try to input URLs directly and can often mistype them. If a page URL is entered that is not recognised then a nice 404 page should appear and not a result that is obviously not intended. If you mistype a URL whilst on a product page then you do get a message telling you that the product could not be found.

The one I find the most surprising from the above list is Tesco Direct, which is a huge web site and could really make use of a decent 404 page to direct users to all the different sections that make up the Tesco Direct site or to complete a search if they cannot find a particular product that they are looking for.

Mixed Results

These next 2 Tesco web site offer some mixed results in that there is a custom 404 page in there somewhere but it is mixed up with server default 404 pages and some other weirdness depending on what you stumble across.

1. Tesco Entertainment

Tesco Entertainment 404 page

The Tesco Entertainment web site has recently been relaunch and sports a nice new design. Previously, the web site just had a server default 404 error page and so would have appeared in the first section of this post. However, the new web site has a custom 404 page, wahey!

Hold on, don’t get too excited as there is a bit of weirdness ahead. There is a custom 404 page in the Home section that tells me that something is wrong if I try to go to a URL such as http://www.tescoentertainment.com/store/browse/home/testing/. It is not a great example but we’ll take it at this stage.

If you go back to the root of the site and try http://www.tescoentertainment.com/testing/, you get a horrible server default page again. Why doesn’t the correct 404 page display here?

2. Tesco Photo

Tesco Photo 404 page

Tesco Photo is Tesco’s photo processing web site and looks like the older style Tesco web site. There are certainly a couple of odd things that I would hope they could eradicate if Tesco pushed a new photo site live.

The start page is http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/welcome.jsp so if we amend that to http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/testing we get a nasty server default 404 page. Going to the root (http://www.tescophoto.com/testing) as we did with Tesco Entertainment also produces the same server default 404 page, good consistency so far but bad 404 page.

Let’s just start this next bit by stating that all URLs as far as I could tell by a quick browse ended with an extension of .jsp. If I pretend to mistype a URL such as http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/view_tour2.jsp instead of http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/view_tour.jsp I do get a custom 404 page (again, why can’t this 404 page display for the entire site?) with a message that tells me to make sure that the URL has the correct extension and goes on to say that all URLs have the extension .html and not .htm.

Not so I’m afraid, as the site uses .jsp and not .html or .htm. Even if I amend my original URL to http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/view_tour.html or http://www.tescophoto.com/wpp/tesco/view_tour2.html I am returned to the server default 404 page and lose the slightly nicer custom 404 page.

I know that this is just a case of the Tesco Photo site updating its error messages but I think it does highlight the importance of what you are telling lost users to do. In this case, a user would get so confused by this message and I don’t think it would make any sense to them at all.

So that is 5 web sites out of a total of 14 that either do not have a custom 404 page at all or have mixed results. This equates to 36% of Tesco’’s web sites, which is exactly the same as Asda’s 36% of web sites not having a custom 404 page.

Custom 404 Pages

Right, we are now onto the the next 9 of Tesco’s web sites, which all have custom 404 pages in place. Let’s see how good they are.

1. Tesco

Tesco 404 page

The 404 page on the main Tesco web site is a very basic 404 page but it does say sorry, explains what may have happened and gives you a link to the home page plus a customer service number and another link to an online enquiry form.

The enquiry form link is a bit odd because it takes you to a page with lots of phone numbers and postal addresses but no online enquiry form that I could fine. At the least the home page link does take you to the Tesco home page.

I think that Tesco are missing an opportunity to better direct their site visitors that may be getting lost and perhaps a link to their sitemap page here http://www.tesco.com/shopping/ would be more useful.

2. Tesco Finance

Tesco Finance 404 page

Offers an abrupt, ‘The page you are trying to reach does not exist.’ message and a link back to the Tesco Finance home page. Not the most polite of 404 pages but the main navigation is present, footer links plus a ‘Got a question’ link that opens an FAQ in a new window. Overall it is better than a lot of Tesco’s web sites but could be nicer to people who are a bit lost.

3. Tesco Compare

Tesco Compare 404 page

A reasonable stab at a 404 page with a short message and a link to the site map. Links to the main sections of the web site are presented below the message plus the main navigation and footer is retained so a lost user should be able to find roughly where they need to go.

4. Tesco Insulation

Tesco Insulation 404 page

Tesco also sell insulation for the home and the site does have a custom 404 page but in all honesty it is not much better than a server default page. The page is not branded as Tesco but rather as a company called Creo, which I believe must be their hosting provider. The 404 page itself is also not especially helpful in that it has no links back to the home page, or to a sitemap, or to complete a search, and so offers no assistance to help the user in where they might want to go next.

5. Tesco plc

Tesco plc 404 page

The Tesco plc web site is Tesco’s corporate home, covering their corporate responsibility, investor information and media details. The 404 page for such an important web site is straightforward and contains the details that you would expect including a standard error message with a link back to the home page. The site displays this set within the site navigation so that a user can still navigation to any section, to the sitemap or complete a search.

Overall, this 404 page is absolutely fine.

6. Tesco Diets

Tesco Diets 404 page

The Tesco Diets web site is concerned with online dieting, weight loss and healthy eating. It has a 404 page but this is branded as eDiets and not Tesco Diets. The text on this 404 page is about eDiets including links to the eDiets home page, eDiets news page and an eDiets email address. Clicking on the link to the eDiets home page actually takes the user back to the Tesco Diets home page. Is that confusing for a user do you think? I think so too.

7. Tesco Opticians

Tesco Opticians 404 page

The Tesco Opticians web site uses the same layout for their 404 page as the main Tesco web site. So there is some consistency at least between the two web sites, which is a good thing. Other than that the comments are the same in that the 404 page is very basic, it does say sorry, explains what may have happened and gives you a link to the Tesco Opticians home page plus a customer service number. In this case there is no link to an enquiry form.

8. Tesco Energy

Tesco Energy 404 page

Tesco Energy explains iteself as being an energy price comparison and carbon offsetting service. The 404 page displays a logo for Xelector (who much provide the price comparison engine that this web site is based on) and so is not Tesco branded. Furthermore, the 404 page is very basic, it consists of a short message and an email address to contact if you think you have stumbled across an error. However, the email address isn’t Tesco’s either, it is webmaster@xelector.com.

As a user of the Tesco Energy site, I would expect that if I get lost and find myself on the 404 page then I would see a Tesco Energy 404 page with Tesco Energy contact details and/or links back to the Tesco Energy web site. I don’t expect to be presented with whoever Xelector are and what they have to do with Tesco Energy.

In my view, this 404 page does not really help the user at all so there is little point in having it.

9. Tesco Travel Store

Tesco Travel Store 404 page

The Tesco Travel Store presents another 404 page with no Tesco branding and not much help. The error message tells you to click back or close down your browser (and when I open it again will I go back to the Tesco Travel Store? Not likely) or ‘click here to go back’. The click here link does not work.

I notice that the 404 page has a Lastminute.com favicon and this is consistent with the Tesco Travel Store being powered by Lastminute.com. I would expect a much better 404 page to be honest, as the Lastminute.com web site has quite a good 404 page.

Conclusions

So that concludes my roundup of Tesco’s 14 web sites and their use (or lack of use) of custom 404 pages. Overall, I am really disappointed that such a major UK retailer seems to be struggling with basic good practice in the proper use of 404 pages and the benefits that they offer to users of their web sites.

Considering the 14 web sites, I found 3 sites to have no 404 page, 2 to have a kind of strange halfway house approach to 404 pages and 9 to offer a semblance of a 404 page but Tesco Insulation, Tesco Diets, Tesco Energy and Tesco Travel Store were all awful examples.

From the remaining 5 web sites Tesco.com and Tesco Opticians had OK 404 pages and Tesco Finance, Tesco Compare and Tesco plc were all quite good. So from the original 14 web sites, only 3 were found to have quite good 404 pages but even those could be better in my view.

Next up we’ll have a look at Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Morrison’s.

Practically one of the first web sites I had a [...]]]>

I have been meaning to carry out some quality checks on well known and popular web sites for a while but I wasn’t quite prepared for just how easy this exercise would turn out to be, especially when looking at the use of custom 404 pages.

Practically one of the first web sites I had a look at was Asda, don’t ask me why – my thought process went retail -> supermarkets -> Asda -> Bingo!

Custom 404 Pages

Just to recap on what custom 404 pages are before I launch into the detail, I wrote an article back in August on why sites should have custom 404 pages. I put forward points that the 404 page should contain a helpful message, links back to the home page or to a sitemap, be designed within the web site’s own styling so you know you are on the correct site and above all, be helpful to the user so they can find their way if they are lost.

Having a well thought out custom 404 page shows that the company behind the web site has considered the user and what happens if they stumble across a broken or incorrect link. The user doesn’t want to hit a page not found error but, if they do, a good 404 page is well worth a bit of extra effort in my view.

Imagine then when one of the first web sites that I checked did not have a good 404 page. In fact, I was sent to a nasty server default 404 page, no nice message, no helpful links, no site branding or styling, nothing. That web site was www.asda.co.uk and, for those who aren’t aware, they are a major UK supermarket and owned by Wal-Mart.

Asda

Once I had recovered my composure, I started to look through the rest of Asda’s web sites (they have quite a few) to see whether any of them had what I would call a proper 404 page instead of one that just exclaims:

Not Found

The requested URL was not found on this server.

It took a little while to go through all of Asda’s separate web sites (all those that reside on a different domain name), as there are 25 of them in total. Or at least 25 that I could find, for all I know there are more hidden away in a forgotten corner of the Asda online empire. There are several that I did find that look like they’ve been forgotten about, at least in a 404 sense.

No 404 Page

Asda - page not found error

The Asda sites listed below did not have a custom 404 page, just the default one that is of practically no use to a lost user at all.

Asda – www.asda.co.uk
Asda Entertainment – www.asda-entertainment.co.uk
Asda Contact Lenses – www.asda-contactlenses.co.uk
Asda Pharmacy – www.asda-pharmacy.co.uk
Asda Flowers – www.asda-flowers.co.uk
Asda Free From – www.asda-freefrom.co.uk
Asda Kids – www.asda-thebinks.co.uk
Asda Kwik Cricket – www.asda-kwikcricket.co.uk
Asda Business Rewards – www.asdabusinessrewards.com

So that is 9 web sites out of a total of 25 that do not have a proper 404 page. Or 36% of Asda’s web sites if you like percentages.

Redirects To Home Page

The next set of web sites redirect the user to the home page instead of presenting a 404 page. This is better than the horrible default page not found error page but is still not the ideal outcome in my opinion. As a user I would prefer to understand that the link I clicked on is not working, that I could report it or contact someone about it if I wanted to and then continue on my way rather than be shoved back to the home page and most likely go through the same process again.

These Asda web sites redirected me to the home page when I tried to go to a page that was not found:

Asda Travel – www.asda-travel.co.uk
Asda Photo – www.asda-photo.co.uk
Asda Charities – charities.asda.com
Asda Supplier – www.asdasupplier.com
Asda Health Matters – health.asda.com

That accounts for another 5 of the 25 Asda web sites, or 20%. We have now covered 14 Asda web sites, which means that the remaining 11 sites all have excellent 404 pages, right? Wrong.

Custom 404 Pages

From Asda’s large network of web sites, we are now down to the final 11 web sites from the original set of 25 that actually have custom 404 pages in place. If your expectation is that these pages are going to be great examples of how 404 pages should be done all I can do is say sorry. Let’s take the worst of them first and work our way to the best and finish on a positive note.

1. Asda Book Club (www.asda-bookclub.co.uk)

Asda Book Club - 404 Page

This web site looks a little neglected, in the browser I tested with (FF3.5) it has an issue in the main navigation that I assume should say 2009 books but actually displays 0 books (it is to the right of 2008 books). None of the months within that section show any information at all.

The 404 pages displays code out onto the screen where a user would expect to see a helpful error message and so is obviously broken. I would prefer to see a redirect to the home page rather than an obviously broken 404 page.

2. Your Asda (your.asda.com)

Your Asda - 404 Page

The Your Asda web site aims to offer inside information on what goes on in Asda, information about their policies and how they source their products plus webcams and blogs.

The 404 page shows a big ‘Sorry’ heading with a large white space underneath it. At first I thought that was a little strange to not include an error message and just have this huge white space with nothing in it but then realised that there was text after all, however, the text was the same colour as the background and so invisible to a user!

Perhaps this is a special ninja 404 page that goes undercover in the Asda organisation, as it does crop up in our next example too.

To add insult to injury, the invisible error message tells you that you can access the home page with the standard ‘click here’ text but then provides you with no link. Has anybody checked this 404 page do you think?

3. Asda The Green Room (greenroom.asda.com)

The Green Room web site is a bit like Your Asda but is for Asda employees to find out what is going on within the Asda organisation.

However, it suffers from the same undercover 404 page that has the invisible error message. Perhaps this page is meant for search engines from the late 1990s by producing text the same colour as the background in the hope that search engines will index the content that users cannot see.

4. Asda Phones (www.asda-phones.co.uk)

We are into site 4 from the list of 11 Asda sites that actually have 404 pages, we are about to hit a good one aren’t we? Wrong, sorry to dash your hopes yet again.

The Asda Phones web site does have a custom 404 page but it appears to be broken with the navigation showing as separate buttons running down the left and the error message floating just below and to the right of these buttons.

So you can reach other sections and get back to the home page but the error page looks as though it has an error, which does not give the user the best impression.

5. Asda Magazine (www.asdamagazine.com)

Asda Magazine - 404 Page

This is the 19th Asda site and finally a 404 page that is not too bad. The user is presented with a fairly basic message telling them that the page that are trying to reach does not exist and why that might be, all fine so far. The next sentence is a little puzzling, as it puts to the user that they may wish to try searching the site or using the site map to find what they are looking for. Sound advice, the strange bit is that there is no link to the site map and no obvious link for a site map anywhere on the page.

Whilst the user is not directed to the search is it quite hard to miss being at the top of the page and quite big. The main navigation is present too so it is fairly easy to decide where to move onto.

I actually used the search to try and find the site map but searching for ’site map’ or ’sitemap’ yielded no results.

6. Asda Groceries Online (groceries.asda.com)

Asda Groceries Online - 404 Page

This 404 page is fairly good in that the message is fairly helpful, if a little long-winded and the tone of the message is a helpful one. They give you a link back to the home page plus a customer service number to call if you need help. Finally there are some footer links including a link for ‘Ask Amy’, which pops Amy up in a new window and allows you to type in questions for Amy to match your question with an answer from her bank of similar questions. Without going into too much detail, I quickly typed, ‘I’m lost’ and got 3 links including instructions on how to get back to the ASDA.com home page and how to get back to the Asda Groceries home page.

One thing I didn’t like about this 404 page is that you lose the main navigation and so no longer feel as though you are ‘within’ the Asda Groceries web site.

Also, I managed to break the Asda Groceries web site and got it to present the horrible Apache Tomcat default server 404 page depending on where in the directory structure I mis-typed the page URL.

7. Asda Jobs (www.asda.jobs)

Asda Jobs - 404 Page

The Asda Jobs web site has a perfectly good 404 page, a helpful message with a link to the sitemap, main sections links including an FAQ and a Contact Us link plus the main navigation and footer links are kept so you remain ‘within’ the web site rather than spun off to a cold outhouse of a 404 page like the Asda Groceries site.

8. George Jobs (www.george.jobs)

The George Jobs web site has practically the same 404 page as the Asda Jobs site but in George styling and so, again, is a perfectly good example of how 404 pages can be. If only the other previous 19 web sites could have this already in place.

9. Asda Direct (direct.asda.com)

Asda Direct - 404 Page

Now into the top 3 Asda sites, the Asda Direct 404 page is another good example and a helpful error page in that the user is offered links to many of the Asda Direct product categories including Furniture, Toys and Electricals plus sub-categories within those main sections. Further links are presented to other Asda web sites and to round the page off there is a full set of footer links including a contact us link.

10. Asda Gifts (www.asda-gifts.co.uk)

Asda Gifts - 404 Page

The Asda Gifts 404 page gives you a short message, a link to a customer services email address to report the error plus a link to the home page. This is all set within the main navigation and site template so you can easily find the help, sitemap, search, contact us, FAQs, etc. or indeed many of the related Asda web sites such as ASDA.com and Asda Direct.

What I also liked about this 404 page was the presentation of gift categories with images that you might like to browse to plus a search by price feature. That really gives the user an easy next step, as they can see the categories presented for them or use the search by price facility. This is not the dead end that many of the Asda 404 pages (or lack of 404 pages) seem to offer.

11. Asda Finance (www.asdafinance.com)

Asda Finance - 404 Page

The best of the bunch, my number 1 performing Asda web site when it comes to a user friendly 404 page. The Asda Finance web site gives you a short error message, links to all the main sections and is set within the web site’s main navigation and so offers easy access to the site map, help and contat us pages.

I liked the simple and clear layout of the page and also a box that neatly explains if the problem persists then they will do all they can to help with a link to the contact us page. To me that shows that Asda Finance care that little bit more. To round it offer there is a sign up for the newsletter box, which just might grab a couple of extra signups because of the clear and helpful 404 page, something that perhaps may be apparent in the newsletter.

Conclusion

We ended on a high, I genuinely thought the last 5 or 6 sites had decent 404 pages.

However, those Asda web sites that either did not have a proper 404 page or redirected to the home page or in some unbelievable cases had broken and error strewn error pages need to be sorted out, as I think that they are poor quality and ultimately providing their users with a poor experience.

404 pages may seem like such a small area of a huge web site but this brief study has really opened my eyes to how major UK retailers can get small and simple aspects of their sites really wrong. If an easy to put together 404 page is difficult then what about the tricky sections of a web site to get right such as the checkout process or payment integration or delivery of groceries to my door.

Right, next time it is Tesco.

What do you think about Asda’s lack of 404 pages? Do you expect better quality sites from major retailers or are poor 404 pages acceptable?

Several of the web sites that I’ve been testing recently have suffered from not having a custom 404 page. It is a very quick and simple test that many web testers complete practically straightaway because it can give an indication of whether a web developer or designer has thought about [...]]]>

Standard 404 page not found

Several of the web sites that I’ve been testing recently have suffered from not having a custom 404 page. It is a very quick and simple test that many web testers complete practically straightaway because it can give an indication of whether a web developer or designer has thought about what they are doing and offered a bit of attention to detail to what they are building or designing.

Because I have come across several web sites not having custom 404 pages in place at all, the screenshot above is taken from a major UK supermarket chain’s main web site, I thought I would write a post on what a custom 404 page is and why you should have one.

As is practically always the case with web development, think of the user first.

What is a custom 404 page?

When you type a web address into your browser or click on a search engine listing, the browser sends a request to the server that hosts the web site and gets a response back. This response from the server is called a response code. If the page that was requested displays within the browser then the response code would most likely be a success code such as 200, which is ok (that is what the response code means, that the request is ok).

There are a whole series of response codes that you can see a list of on Wikipedia and it is useful to know some of the main ones.

The 404 response code is ‘not found’, which means that the page that was requested cannot be found. So the first thing about a 404 page not found error is that it is generally bad if a visitor to your web site encounters this because it means that they could not be given what they requested.

What would you do if you encountered the following when browsing a web site?

A typical 404 Page Not Found error message

A likely followup to this is that you would click back to the search results or wherever you came from and then click onto a different web site.

But instead of hitting the visitor with the standard awful looking 404 page not found error page, you can implement a custom 404 page that fits in with your web site’s styling and includes a nicely worded message that tells the visitor what might have happened and what the next step is that they can take.

That sounds a much better way of handling the problem doesn’t it?

Why would visitors hit a 404 page in the first place?

At this point you may be thinking why would any visitor to my web site hit a 404 page not found error in the first place? I bet you check all your links regularly to make sure none are broken and keep everything pretty neat and tidy so would not expect to get any 404s happening on your site.

However, you may be surprised at what visitors can do and what they may come across on the Internet. That sounds quite cryptic, and perhaps a little worrying, so let me explain a couple of scenarios.

1. Visitors may type in the URL of a particular page on your web site and get it wrong, this is natural and it happens. Perhaps they type in www.mywebsite.com/contactus.html instead of the correct URL of www.mywebsite.com/contact.html. If they do then they will hit a 404 page.

2. Visitors may bookmark a particular page and use that to reach your web site. Over time you may take that old page down or move it to another address. Any visitors that bookmarked the old URL will hit a 404 page everytime they use the bookmark (possibly only once as they will think you have gone away).

3. People may pick up on a page from your web site, perhaps a news article or press release and add a link to it on a forum or blog. Again, this link may become out of date and anyone clicking on that link will hit a 404 page.

4. Sometimes you will delete a page or remove a section of your site and actually want visitors to hit a 404 page. Why? Because you use the custom 404 page to actually tell the user that the page no longer exists but that they can still access the other sections of your site.

5. Typos happen all the time either with internal links that you place on your site or incoming links and having a decent 404 page mops up any visitors that stray onto a URL that is not found.

6. If you redesign your web site then you may use completely different filenames for your pages and so all old links need to be updated to the new URLS. If this does not happen then lots of people will hit 404 pages. Moving to a new web site will be covered in more detail in another post so please look out for it if this is an issue for you, or contact me with any queries, I would be glad to help.

So there are 6 scenarios where 404s can get displayed to visitors and totally realistic for any reasonably active web site.

I’m Convinced, What Should My Custom 404 Page Do?

The first think it should do is inform the visitor in a nice way that they have encountered a problem. The wording that you use is entirely up to you and should be written in the same style or tone as the copy used elsewhere in the site.

Once you’re past explaining the problem to the visitor you can try to help them find the page or section that they might have been looking for. So at the minimum give them a link to the web site’s home page as when visitors get lost they like to go back to the home page and start again. But you don’t have to stop there, you could give them all the main sections of your site as links with a small piece of text explaining each section or you could offer an ability to complete a search on your site. A link to your site map should also be included.

Or include an ability to email someone or link to a contact form, so the visitor can continue to pursue what it was they were interested in.

Include anything that helps the visitor and it will help them to realise what a great web site this is.

Use the same styling for your custom 404 page as you have for the rest of the site. This shows the visitor that it is a part of the same web site and they haven’t been redirected off onto some nightmare page not found machine.

An example of a good 404 page in my view is the one used at high street retailer Next, as shown in the screenshot below:

Next custom 404 page

You could also get creative with your 404 page if your web site’s brand or subject matter allows for it. Have a look at some of these examples of creative custom 404 page designs.

Update – the above link now goes to a 404 page (wouldn’t you believe it) so I have found another worthy blog post to link to providing creative examples of 404 page designs.

Whilst you are being creative and including lots of helpful links for where the visitor may want to go next please remember to keep it simple and user friendly. A custom 404 page is not an excuse to throw everything on it, you should still approach it from the point of view of helping your visitor find their way as quickly and easily as possible.

Conclusion

To recap then, all web sites should have a custom 404 page for the visitors benefit so they do not get hit with a nasty standard 404 page such as the screenshots shown above, help them find their way.

Custom 404 pages can make a big difference in capturing any users finding URLs that do not exist and helping them onto the next step. Please make sure you include a custom 404 page in all of the web sites that you build.