Broken
hyperlinks and other site errors are a serious problem and there are a
number of reasons for this:
- A large number of websites are being
closed down, changed or moved.
- Websites are not being properly
maintained. As with any software project, 25% to 50% of the original
time spent on development needs to be spent on maintenance.
- Website information content, software,
and architecture is constantly being changed along with the tools used
to create and serve sites.
Websites are not often properly managed and the management of areas
such as web site security are inherently more complex and difficult to
manage.
The variety and number of technical complications such as different
scripting languages has increased and it is impossible for webmasters to
have knowledge in more than a few areas.
Budgets for a web presence are not often adequate enough to fund the
creation of content in the sites, let alone all of the additional
maintenance activities required for sites with more than minimal
content.
Errors frustrate users who are becoming
less patient. Users typically go to fewer sites to get information, and
they will tend to gravitate towards the more reliable sites rather then
a hit and miss approach.
As part of the regular maintenance cycle of your website, it is
important to have a schedule to check all of the links on your site.
In fact, a good plan is to cycle through pages using a pre-determined
schedule on a monthly basis so that correcting links becomes a normal
part of your ongoing business processes in the same way you would
proofread a newsletter or a mailing to your donors.
Make an investment in software that cycles through your site and checks
for all broken links on a regular basis, particularly if your site is
one that references a larger number of external links.
Your site should include a feedback form with one of the options being
to inform you of a broken link.
It’s important to think about your users when re-designing or changing
your site. Include a notice on the front page if you’re moving the site,
and also think about the possibility of emailing your constituent base
if the site is moving or if there have been major architectural changes
that would cause links to be broken to end users. It also gives you an
opportunity to market changes to the site at the same time.
If you do have a lot of external links, think about how you place them
in your site. For example, if referencing a document on another site, it
may be better to just reference the home page of the site rather than
the specific document address. The home page address is less likely to
change as compared to content buried deep within a site.
To help users with your own site, make sure that the domain name is
registered and pointing correctly to your site.
When you do move large blocks of content, put a page in the site at the
old location that will automatically forward users to the new location
so they don’t have to try and guess where it might be located.
If your site is changing constantly, it can partly be because you
haven’t spent adequate time in planning how you want the content to be
organized, how the content is going to grow and how the users will be
interacting with the site. Time invested in design up front, will save
money time and effort in the long run, just like any other software
development project.
Even with persistent review it is still likely that some links will be
broken and that other errors may result.
You should have well constructed error pages that trap any site errors
and inform users what they need to do.
Some of the following suggestions are useful for the construction of
these pages:
- Design them to look like the rest of
the site.
- They should describe what went wrong
in language that the users can understand.
- They should have navigation links to
popular pages or alternate links within the site so users can get to
where they want to quickly.
- There should be ways to contact the
organization to resolve the error.
A final note. If you find broken links on this site,
please let us know, and we’ll try to get them fixed ASAP. (Thanks to
Sasha Bateman who pointed out that this particular feature was missing
from this page.) |