How can I utilitize my page_not_found page?

Esther Pomeleo-Fowler

When a URL or link is not valid, Convio does not throw/generate a 404 error in the classic sense.  Instead, Convio renders a PageBuilder page called "page_not_found".  You can find and edit it in your list of PageBuilder pages under "Content" > "PageBuilder".

Hunting down bad links on your site can be quite difficult.  What you may want to do is gather feedback from your viewers as to how they reached the page_not_found page.  If you have the Surveys component, you can do this by creating a survey in the Survey component ("Content" > "Surveys").

The tendency when creating a survey is to ask the viewer for their email address by adding a "Constituent Registration Information" question.  However, asking for that information may discourage the casual viewer from providing you with the feedback as to how he or she got to the page_not_found page.  You may want to spend some time considering whether growing your house file is the goal of the survey before adding such a question to this survey.  To encourage viewers to submit the survey, most surveys embedded on the page_not_found page contain only one question of the type "Text Value" that asks something along the line of:

"We're sorry - the page or function you tried to access could not be found on our web site. We would appreciate it if you could take a moment to submit this form below, including details of how you arrived at this page, so that we can correct the problem."

Some other recommendations for how to configure the survey include:

   * Disable the survey's autoresponder in step 3 of configuring the survey.  If your constituents happen to be logged in, they will get an autoresponder if you do not disable this which might be confusing.  At the very least, you will likely want to change the content of the autoresponder from the default as it isn't terribly relevant on this survey.

    * Configure the survey to email an admin within your organization so that someone can follow up on these survey results in step 1 of configuring the survey.  The alternative is to check the results of the survey on a regular basis to see if anyone has submitted it.

Once the survey is created, you can edit your page_not_found PageBuilder page under "Content" > "PageBuilder".  The survey can embedded from the "Components" drop down in the WYSIWYG.

afleisher

Hi Jeana,

I find it frustrating that Convio doesn't allow us a good way of tracking broken links; because how on earth can we fix them?  In my opinion most people would not bother filling out the survey you suggest we build.

You've always given us good advice and help in the past, so I don't mean to argue here.  I'm using Google Webmaster Tools, which might give me the data I'm looking for -- but it doesn't seem to know of the "page_not_found" page on our site.  I'm trying to edit the page but the refresh period is SO short that I can't even click on the element box quickly enough to launch the page editor before it blinks me over to our site's home page.  Any suggestions for this??