5 Unexpected Pages Every Website Should Have (that you might not know about)

When creating a website, the first pages that come to mind are the most common: homepage, about page, contact page. But what if I told you there are some hidden and mostly unknown pages every website should have, and that you might not know about? These pages might not appear in your navigation menu, but are just as fundamental to create a memorable, positive, personal experience for your clients.

Legal pages

Every website should have a privacy policy, cookie policy and, based on the services and products it sells, possibly even a terms and conditions page. These pages might vary based on where you live and where your users come from. However, every website should be legally protected with legal pages easily accessible (and ideally linked in the website’s footer), in fact you could be violating GDPR and other laws if you don’t have them.

404 Error page

The 404 error page is a landing page that tells your users the page they’re looking for is no longer available or doesn’t exist. A standard 404 page will be present on every website, but I highly recommend you take the time to make it personal. This page only needs a couple of lines of text (or less!) but imagine if it had your unique tone of voice to make the user’s navigation smooth and coherent even when he gets lost! This is your chance to create a branded experience with custom micro copy and handy call-to-actions to help your users find what they were actually looking for. Have a peek at my 404 custom page, simple yet effective, right?

Newsletter page

I’m sure you’ve heard of the importance of email marketing and chances are you’re already trying to populate your newsletter. While you should plan to include opt-in forms throughout most of your main website pages, it’s worth considering having a dedicated newsletter page. Imagine having a dedicated URL on your website where to send your social media following to invite them to join your email list! This will be a place where to include an embedded signup form to allow users to subscribe to your email list easily. Ideally you would also mention what they can expect from signing up, or even offer something in return for their trust (freebie, offer, exclusive benefits…).

Instagram Links Page

Because Instagram only allows to include one link in your bio, an Instagram links page (or linktree) comes in handy to provide different linked resources under the same URL. You might have seen or used a similar asset like Linktree to create a similar page. But you’ll be amazed with how simple it can be creating an Instagram links page within your own website. I discussed the benefits and the steps to create your own Linktree page in this blog post.

Thank you pages

One more way to further customize your website’s user experience, is creating some thank you pages. I recommend you create one for each type of form you have on your website (newsletter and contact, for example). Your users will be automatically redirected to these pages when filling a form on your website. In these pages you will provide a unique branded experience with some custom micro copy, explaining what to expect next, maybe even providing some additional resources, blog posts, or answersing to the most frequent questions to anticipate their needs. Thank you pages will not only improve your user experience, but with tracking their traffic, they can also become a tool to more specifically target your future promotions or ads online.

You can see how even the most hidden pages can be highly fundamental. When working at web designs, I like to include all these pages in my clients’ websites to really elevate the branded experience for their users. If you’re missing any of these pages on your website, go add them to your site, or keep them in mind when planning your new web design.