If you have changed the URL of your site or eliminated a page, it is important to keep your visitors from getting lost or confused. You can do this by redirecting them appropriately.

The first thing you'll want to do is add some HTML or other code that will redirect your visitors to the URL that you want them to see. Depending on whether this URL change is temporary or permanent, you can add some text on the first page telling your visitors to amend their bookmarks and make a note of this new address. You may want to tell them that the original page will be up until a certain date, and from then on they will need to use the second URL.

Code for Automatic

You can also code your page to automatically redirect the reader to the new URL. There are two options for this: You can have a client-side redirect, whereby your readers must click on the new URL then proceed to the destination you have chosen, or you can have a server-side redirect. In this case, the change from the first URL to the updated URL is seamless. Visitors see the URL change on their browser, but the move will be spontaneous.

Although it is up to you how the redirect page your reader sees should look, it is a good idea to make navigation as easy and explicit as possible. Avoid actions such as routing a user seeking a page you have eliminated directly back to the home page with no indication of what kind of error occurred. Users will not be able to tell if fault was theirs (perhaps they typed in the URL incorrectly?) or yours and they'll get frustrated.

Since the actual code you need to use to redirect visitors is specific to the program or language you originally used to create your site, your best sources of information on how to do it will be specific to your program or language.

Check Your Script

To get started, here are a couple of suggestions. If your page is written in Java, check out "Redirecting Your Visitors to the Preferred Form of Your URL Using JavaScript" from chami.com for a client-side solution or "Automatically Redirect Your Visitors to Your New Home Page" from the same site for a server-side. If you have used Microsoft's FrontPage, try "Simple Redirection" from builder.com. And if you have written your page in HTML, you might want to look at webmonkey's "What Can Do for You?".

Confusion and dead ends can quickly dissuade visitors from coming back to your site. But if you make it easy for them to navigate with well-thought-out redirects, you'll keep them happy and coming back for more.

About the Author:
Laura Learmonth

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