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: