One of the highest trafficked pages on your site may be your "404 Error - Page Not Found," as it is with many small to mid-sized sites. Chances are, this page also has the highest Exit/Bounce Rates. Outdated inbound links and misspelled URLs (from less-than-careful webmasters) will send viewers to your site, but they'll land on your Page Not Found page, not on the page you've intended them to land. These links are out of your control and could bring negative consequences to your site and stats if you don't take two simple steps to convert exits on your "Page Not Found" record into pageviews.

So how do you convert these would-be viewers that are being turned off by the Page Not Found error into regular viewers of your site that browse multiple pages? By following this simple advice:

1. Rework the template/content of your "Page Not Found" page. Instead of the technical-speak of a standard Error message, humanize the message with verbiage that sounds, well, like a human wrote it. For example, use "Hmm, we can't seem to find this page" instead of "Page Not Found!" Your viewers will keep the faith in your site and will be more likely to click around - they won't think the site is broken, and they have multiple options on where to navigate next on your site, etc.
2. Provide aesthetically pleasing "gateways" on the Page Not Found template (a rollover image, a control panel of buttons directing viewers to popular areas of your site, etc). These gateways - whether they are text, graphic, flash, etc -should be present so that your viewers have multiple options (and the motivation to click through to them) on the error page, instead of turning visitors away with an error message and a text-link to the homepage.
   

Here's an example of how it has worked, in at least 1 situation: When my company (changed domains and) relaunched their site LogHome.com, we had a lot of outdated inbound links pointing to now-erroneous pages (the file path had changed, etc) and the result was an increase of visits on our "Page Not Found" page. The Exit Rate was 88% and the Bounce Rate was 93%. We changed the traditional error message to the aforementioned updated style of error page and the Exit Rate plummeted to 32% while the Bounce Rate went down to 34% Take a look at our revamped Page Not Found page. It's nothing special, but it works: Erroneous URL on LogHome.com. And - let me know if this works for you!