Error Page Best Practices

We recommend following error page best practices to give your customers the best experience.

• Briefly explain what happened. Provide a reason for your customer ending up on a page they didn't expect to see.
• Don't blame the user. Don't tell the user that they messed up. Simply apologize and move on to something more positive.
• Provide a search box. Give the user a way to search for the page they want to find.
• Offer more navigation. Give the user multiple ways of navigating back to the site. Perhaps have links to specific products or categories and try to provide ways for them to quickly get back to shopping, such as:
  • Going back one step
  • Returning to the home page
  • Going to the customer service or help page
• Use a little humor. Lighten up the situation and interruption with a little brand-based humor.
• Ask the customer to help you. Offer a way to let you know about a broken link with a link to customer service and a promotion code thanking them.
• Build error pages as content assets within B2C Commerce. Content assets reduce the need to involve web developers for changes, and you can reuse elements in other places (such as the Zero Search Results page).