3 Great Examples of 404 Error Pages by DC Website Firms

Apr 27

MikeWeb Design, Web Industry 404, dc website firm, Web Design 2 Comments

404 error pages are often overlooked and taken too lightly.  If designed well, these pages can reel back in a lost or misguided visitor and bring them to the page or information they initially set out to see.  Unfortunately, many websites don’t use 404 pages.  If any of their links are broken, pages down, or any other mishap they run the risk of losing their visitor.

The last few days, we took a look at over 30 404 pages hosted by local DC website firms.  The research was quite startling:

• Nearly 1/3 of the DC website firms didn’t have their own 404 page;
• Roughly 1/2 of the firms had very dull and plain pages; and,
• Only a very small handful had ones that reeled back in their users and added a creative twist at the same time.  (Another reason, I’m a big fan of creative 404 pages is because they are rarely seen and thus design agencies, or any company for that matter, can be more creative with this page.)

Here are a few great examples:

Cohenspire, http://www.cohenspire.com/404/
Text: Oh no you broke something! Ok well…let’s be honest I probably messed something up. Find your way home or let me know what broke.

nclud, http://www.nclud.com/404
Text: Whoops! We’ve slipped! If you think a page should be here, then there probably should be one. We’ve slipped-up and apologize; but rest assured that someone somewhere just got an email about this, we’re sort of fanatics about that whole user-experience thing.  Don’t let one bad banana hold you back. Learn more about us, our work and our process, read a bit from our sketchbook or contact us. If you’re one of our many awesome clients looking for our client login, you can always login at http://clients.nclud.com

TK Designs, http://www.tkdesigns.tv/404
Text: OMG! I think I’m lost. ?#$! Looks like the file you are looking for is not available. This may be because we just added our new page and it is still missing a few files.  You may contact us or go back home.

And of course, our very own 404 page…
Text: 404 Oops, the bulb burned out.  You must have entered in a wrong URL, or the page is down… or maybe we should build a new page because you thought there would be one here. We’re not blaming anyone… let’s get through this together.  Here’s the way back, browse through our work, learn about our expertise, read our story, view our awards, or get in touch with us.