This is not the most riveting post, but it could have an impact on your sales and overall user experience so I urge you to read on. If you are not a Volusion user, the focus of the post is still important.

Let’s begin. There are three types of 404 errors that can happen on Volusion. A 404 error is when your browser picks up the phone, calls the servers over at Volusion and asks for some URL. The server responds, “hey, I can’t find that”. There you have it, a 404 error.

1. Rick James Slap 404 Error Handling

This happens when either you have deleted your /* entry in the redirect manager (/admin/RedirectManager.asp) or are using it incorrectly and your browser takes over the messaging. Uh oh. This is the worst case. The browser returns an ultra generic, sterile message. Who knows what your users will do now. They may shop somewhere else, they may swear at you, they may forget you even existed, who knows. We do know they didn’t find the page nor did they find any helpful information.

I tested this on a very large handful of clients in the Volusion design gallery. I was slapped many times. Cold Blooded!

2. No-Look-Pass 404 Error Handling

This is when you have used the Volusion Redirect Manager properly, but you have simply told the system to redirect all bungled requests to your home page.

Source Path: /*
Target Path: http://www.yoursite.com

This is ok, but it does blindly route everyone to the home page. Not very helpful and still adds to the confusion. Not an ideal user experience, but better than a smack in the face.

Note: The forward slash is your domain root and the asterisk is the “wildcard”. In the web development world, the wildcard is used in many, many areas. Get used to the terminology.

3. Eagle Scout 404 Error Handling

This is a friendly helpful 404 page that helps your users understand what just happened. Here is a sample redirect rule for Volusion:

Source Path: /*
Target Path: /404error-a/123.htm

Ah, now you can control the information users see. You can add all sorts of stuff to a page like this. There is an entertaining article on Smashing Magazine about 404 pages. It gives you some very creative 404 page examples. Let your imagination go. Eagle scout salute!

Note: You have to change the 123 to the actual article you created in your database. You can name the file anything you want as long as you follow the name up with a -a. It could be /blahdeblah-who-cares-im-out-of here-a/123.htm. (see the Volusion Knowledge Base)

Consult your Google Webmaster Tools, Analytics or your proprietary server side tools to get the 404 reports.

The robot.txt (http://www.robotstxt.org/) is a publicly available file and when used properly is a very good way to control what search engines crawl and what they don’t.

“Who cares. I’d rather watch the grass grow…”

Well, if you are using Volusion, then you may. Volusion has .asp pages that are sometimes tied to parameters (i.e. “?” and “&”) which are based on session/query stuff which, in turn, can generate a ton of URLs all with the same TITLE and META data. You will have lots of URLs all looking the same essentially. You will end up having quasi-duplicate content and the best policy, regardless of how you read into Google’s duplicate content policies, is to minimize as much of it as possible.

“Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.”- Google

Why leave it to guess work when you can finally control something yourself by writing some exclusion rules thereby giving Google more relevant content.

What now?

Dont’ freak out. Simply edit your robots.txt file in your SEO area (/admin/SEOFriendly.asp). Your goal here is to DISALLOW all* search engines from crawling these pages/patterns.

You can also add your googe_sitemap.asp to your robots.txt file and tell the Google com’n'get it (or submit your google_sitemap.asp via the webmaster tools).

Here’s the robots.txt I use.

Sitemap:http://www.YOURSITE.com/google_sitemap.asp

User-agent:*
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /AccountSettings.asp
Disallow: /Affiliate_info.asp
Disallow: /Affiliate_signup.asp
Disallow: /Affiliate_thankyou.asp
Disallow: /catalog_subscribe.asp
Disallow: /donate.asp
Disallow: /EmailaFriend.asp
Disallow: /Email_Me_When_Back_In_Stock.asp
Disallow: /FileUpload/TextObject.aspx
Disallow: /GiftOptions.asp
Disallow: /help.asp
Disallow: /Help_EmailBetterPrice.asp
Disallow: /Help_FreeShipping.asp
Disallow: /kb_results.asp
Disallow: /login_sendpass.asp
Disallow: /Login.asp
Disallow: /mailinglist_subscribe.asp
Disallow: /mailinglist_unsubscribe.asp
Disallow: /myaccount.asp
Disallow: /MyAccount.asp
Disallow: /OrderFinished.asp
Disallow: /one-page-checkout.asp
Disallow: /orders.asp
Disallow: /ProductDetails.asp
Disallow: /PhotoDetails.asp
Disallow: /PlaceOrder.asp
Disallow: /Returns.asp
Disallow: /Register.asp
Disallow: /Receipt.asp
Disallow: /SearchResults.asp
Disallow: /ShoppingCart.asp
Disallow: /shoppingcart.asp
Disallow: /Terms.asp
Disallow: /Terms_privacy.asp
Disallow: /Ticket_List.asp
Disallow: /Ticket_New.asp
Disallow: /TrackPackage.asp
Disallow: /WishList.asp


Note: Volusion does not have a robots.txt file for both it’s SSL and regular layers. Only one, so you are not able to write a special one for https. It’s not terribly common for this to happen but searching for site:www.yoursite.com always brings up some interesting things.

Note: This post is intended to save me from writing the same answers in the Volusion forum over and over and over and over again.

So you have bought a Volusion e-commerce package and you have decided, as a business owner, to role out a design yourself. If you don’t have a fair amount of CSS skills, a solid understanding of HTML and working knowledge of the Volusion templates, I would highly advise against doing design yourself for two big reasons:

1. You are not a web designer.

2. If you are spending all your time in CSS, HTML, image editing software, FTP, the grid, information architecture, and design fundamentals then who’s developing your marketing strategies, organizing your business, reading analytics and forging relationships?

You are still reading?…ugh, so you are persistent and intend to do everything yourself. Maybe it’s because you feel web design is quite easy or maybe you simply have $0 funds to hire anyone. Either way, here are some steps that will hopefully get you on the right track.

1. Spend some time over at w3schools or another reputable online tutorial of your liking. Get a feel for the technical landscape. This is but one component of front-end development.
2. Get Firebug installed on your Firefox browser. Figure out how to use it. This will enable you to experiment with the CSS and HTML without committing anything. It also has some other great components.
3. Either buy some software or find something online (http://www.pixlr.com) that will create and edit images. Find something simple! Adobe CS3 is probably overkill at this point.
4. Build up a nice set of bookmarks that you can constantly reference. SmashingMagazine.com has a ton of design tutorials. A List Apart and ThinkVitamin are also nice resources. If it is a “redesign”, I would also consult your Analytics program.
5. Read each entry over in the V5 Design Manual. Then read it again. This is very important.
6. Take the Volusion design tutorial to understand the directory structure.
7. Download a robust FTP client (I use Cyberduck for the Mac and SmartFTP for the PC) and get crackin’.

This is not the definitive, all time, forever-and-a-day design guide. It is simply a list of steps I would highly recommend.