Our favourite 404 designs

Raise your brand awareness with your error page.

In our last blog post, we reviewed some great examples of how to use a 404 error page to your advantage. In case that wasn't enough, we've also put together a list of our favourite 404 designs to spark some inspiration for your own website. As a design studio, we always appreciate design work that deals with a mundane issue whilst staying on brand. Here are some of our favourites...

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Email Centre UK

These guys let you play Alan Sugar for a split second, or simply guilt trip you into heading back to the homepage. Either way, it’s funny, and is a clever way to introduce you to some core members of the company and re-engage the user.

Error page  / Submission page

9gag

Simple, silly and smart. 9gag update their 404 with a new GIF to match a meme that’s big at the time. They also give a solution to never see their error page again by downloading their app.

Error page

IMDB

The best thing a 404 page can be is on brand, and IMBD stay true to their service with a twist on classic movie quotes. What’s the bet you refresh the page a few times before clicking on a movie title…

Error page

Lego

Lego keep it on-brand (and manage to get that song stuck in your head again) with their 404 error page. Unlike some of the other error pages in this list, Lego maintains the overall architecture of their site, allowing easy access to the nav and footer.

Error page

Mailchimp

Generic messaging on templated error pages gets boring pretty quickly. Mailchimp combines their tone of voice with a silly animated cartoon to make you chuckle.

Error page

Tricks

We had to include our own 404 page, didn’t we? This fun ‘space raiders’ style game brings our brand to the forefront and gives the user a break from reality by blasting floating letters. Once you’ve reached a certain score, we’ll give you some links to guide you to other (hopefully working) parts of our site.

Error page

All of these funky 404 designs further solidify the importance of getting the most out of your customers’ attention. Engagement is the single most important currency before anything else, without it you are unable to sell yourself. Make sure you’re not wasting your customer’s time – utilise it however you can! Looking for a fun way to animate your own error page? It’s more simple than you may think. Send us an email and we can work up some ideas!

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