Isn’t it just a few visitors lost? Just a few sales you’ve sacrificed?

You might see this as simply the ‘cost of doing business’ online.

Some might even go as far as to think that a visitor who isn’t willing to take the effort to type in the correct URL wouldn’t have bought from them anyway.

Not true.

And even more interesting is that it’s not just about lost traffic, subscribers, or sales.

There are plenty more visitors who’ll come to your site and buy from you.

But as I said, it’s not just about the money.

It’s also about credibility. It’s about your reputation. We all know the importance of establishing trust and building a relationship with your audience.

Your prospective customers won’t hand you their credit card until they’re absolutely confident that it’s safe for them to do so.

This is especially true online because in many cases they can’t see, hear or talk to you.

Your website acts as your representative, your online sales-force. The impression it gives your visitors shapes the impression they have of you.

Pop quiz: How does a first-time visitor feel about you when they hit a 404 Error page? Confident and Positive?

Hardly. It sows a seed of doubt in their mind. Even if they can find their way to the right page, you’ll have to work extra hard to overcome that doubt.

How can I be so sure? As part of my latest 404 research, I simply asked people how they felt when they hit an error page. Interestingly, there was a definite difference in attitude between those who owned a website, and those who didn’t…

Website owners were understandably more forgiving. Here are some of their comments:

•  “It’s a fact of life. Mistakes are unavoidable. If someone doesn’t have enough patience to correct them, there’s not much I can do.”

• “Man, I know there are links with obvious errors in them and luckily I’m smart enough to see the problem, so I’ll make the change. Of course, some links actually are broken, but what can you do?”

•  “I mostly just assume the site’s down, or they’ve taken that page offline to do some work on it. Sometimes I make a mental note to try again later, but I pretty much always forget!”

Those who didn’t own or run their own website tended to have another opinion:

• “I think to myself, if this guy doesn’t even care to check if his links are alright, would he give a damn if I were his customer?”

• “That was a dodgy link. What if he has dodgy links on his other pages, too? What if I pay up and get screwed over?”

•  “What’s this? Looks like I did something wrong here. Let me just go in and type the URL again. Crap, same thing. I ain’t wasting no more of my time. I’ll try the next site in Google.”

•  “Backclick! Move on. Plenty more sites that do work!”

It’s illogical, largely unfounded, and mostly not true, but in the minds of many of your visitors…

404 Error page = Bad Website Owner

As I mentioned before, you’re losing more than three quarters of visitors who end up on a 404 page. You’re kissing them goodbye and sending them straight to your competitor.

But the worst part is, you may have damaged your credibility with those visitors, and all but guaranteed they won’t do business with you anytime soon.

Sometimes, it seems, you just can’t win!