When designing, a common slip-up (although not a terminal error), is not designing an interesting or creative looking error 404 page. The error 404 page appears when the desired page is missing/ incorrectly entered into the browser by the surfer. Usually, those 404 error pages are bothersome for visitors, and can take away a potential visitor if they go away after landing on the page. Wouldn’t it be good if you could capture as many potential visitors as possible, who land on error 404 pages?
If carefully designed, error pages not only captivate, but also assist surfers and readers to their desired destination. Therefore, 404 error pages must be carefully designed so as to be interactive, user-friendly, and fully functional. I would not say the Google error 404 page is an interactive one, but you be the judge.
Error pages should be “interesting”. They can convey a serious message or any humorous message. In either case you must attempt to captivate the visitor. You can also specify the reasons that have caused the error page. Usually websites also include a search bar. This can assist visitors to investigate their required content from the website. And most importantly a vibrant 404 error page can enliven your website.
In the end, designing a creative 404 error page is totally up to the web designer, and it only becomes more important if you get a lot of traffic and made some major changes to your website. A very simple 404 error page (like ours) can also serve its function as long as the visitor has a clear option to return to the homepage. 🙂
After some thought, in keeping with our clean and simple layout, we opted for a very simple 404 error page.
Below we have gathered some interesting error 404 pages.
http://www.duoh.com/404
http://productplanner.com/404
http://www.apartmenthomeliving.com/404.html
http://henrikhedegaard.com/404/404.html
http://www.wulffmorgenthaler.com/error.htm
http://cssremix.com/archives/1353
http://www.scythe.net/404.html
http://www.gog.com/en/error/404
http://www.jhuskisson.com/404
http://ilovetypography.com/404
http://chrisglass.com/404
http://www.lanaichc.org/404.html
Here are few designs of error 404 pages that might serve you as an influence to design your own creative error 404 page.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/17/404-error-pages-reloaded/
