404 Error Page – Let’s have some fun with this

Author: Jack Martin

One of the things that really annoys me is clicking on a link to find that the page I was interested in NO LONGER EXISTS. The owner of that website has just created a MISSED OPPORTUNITY for themselves. Whether it was product information, a blog post, or any page content. I was interested enough to click on the link.

There are a number of fun ways to avoid the MISSED OPPORTUNITY on your website by creating a custom 404 Error Page.

The Error 404 “Page not found” is the error page displayed whenever someone asks for a page that’s simply not available on your site. The reason for this is that there may be a link on your site that was wrong or the page might have been recently removed from the site. As there is no web page to display, the web server sends a page that simply says “404 Page not found”. -www.404errorpages.com

Let’s not have your site visitors see the standard “The page cannot be found” text.

Rather, have some fun with what your site visitors see when they arrive to your website, but unfortunately land on a page that does not exist.

Here are some fun examples of how other companies have approached the 404 Error Page.

Fun flow-chart with some active links to take you to pages of the site you might have been interested in.

Animation to lighten the mood.

Humor in cartoon form. Links to recent blog posts and suggestions to different pages the user was trying to reach.

Nothing fancy visually, however take a closer look at the content. The site owner is sharing a recipe for a Mai Tai! Something worthwhile to grab even though the page content wasn’t found.

Check out our 404 Error page.

And if you are having fun looking at 404 Error pages. Here’s some links sites with lists of fun 404 Error Pages:

SmashingApps
HongKait
Fab404
Web Analytics World