11–20 of 48 posts
A solid idea, but why not spend 5 more minutes, make the link point to a page that says "Sorry, we're still working on [feature X]. Check back soon!" and avoid looking like an amateur? Better yet, include a form on that landing page asking how important the feature would be to the user, and get the best of both worlds.
I think this is a faulty argument, since you know most users will hit refresh and realize it is your site after about 30 seconds? People are pretty familiar with this new fangled web browsing on those interwebz now...
Is this supposed to go to a 404 page?
A solid idea, but why not spend 5 more minutes, make the link point to a page that says "Sorry, we're still working on [feature X]. Check back soon!" and avoid looking like an amateur? Better yet, include a form on that landing page asking how important the feature would be to the user, and get the best of both worlds.
> make the link point to a page that says "Sorry, we're still working on [feature X]. Check back soon!" and avoid looking like an amateur? You've officially missed the point of the article. The argument is not that you look like an amateur, but that the user thinks the problem is with their computer or ISP. Since most 404's are due to user error in URI entry, web filters or cross-site link rot, this is a reasonable a…
I know this because I work for a company that provides an enterprise B2B web app, and customers already consistently blame the stuff that ISN'T our problem (connection, filters, ancient browser, javascript turned off, etc.) on us.
And yes, a lot of 404's are due to improper URI entry and "cross-site link rot"... but isn't that a completely moot point since we're talking about internal links?
Any guesses as to the name of the unnamed "wildly popular web site"? :)
Twitter. They also do these tests regularly to make sure we still need existing features.
> ... and it was acquired not so long ago for a figure with 9 digits
Alternate link - http://dob.posterous.com/the-404-test-wildly-brilliant Apparently the blog.dougpetkanics.com DNS may not have propagated yet. Sorry!
A solid idea, but why not spend 5 more minutes, make the link point to a page that says "Sorry, we're still working on [feature X]. Check back soon!" and avoid looking like an amateur? Better yet, include a form on that landing page asking how important the feature would be to the user, and get the best of both worlds.
But it's more than a solid idea. It's a proven technique. It's in use in more than a few major websites(I know from experience).
The beauty of it is: A) Couldn't be any simpler and faster to implement
B) A 404 page actually can be a better user experience. If you give the user a "Coming Soon" or "Under construction" or "We didnt really build this page, but wanted to AB test whether it would be worth it"---those can be actually more confusing to the average internet user than a 404. Remember, the average internet user probably doesn't even know what market testing means.
C) In my experience, when it is used it's used in a very small fraction of visits(just enough to get a relatively significant result set), so only a very small number of visitors actually reach the 404.
D) The users that reach the 404 might be annoyed for a sec, but generally return to what they were doing before.
E) Because it's so fast and easy to implement, and there is only 1 key variable to look at (number of clicks), it can quickly be used over and over for many different situations(think: easy to automate).
My personal experience is that if users are confused about what system to blame, they blame any systems they can!
I'd guess this approach works if you have a large user base with a lot of churn. It doesn't matter if you upset a particular user because they probably wouldn't return anyways.
I really like this philosophy. Why waste precious development time early on building something no one wants?