It really makes users sad and sometimes even angry when the homepage of a website couldn’t be found. Visitors don’t get upset if an error page is presented in a funny, unusual or elegant manner. In such an effective way you can save your clients and they will, surely, came back to your website where the 404 page has an original design, offers the solution of what to do and provides useful information about the error. So, don’t underestimate the importance and value of a custom error page, create a really outstanding one to point users in the right direction if the page on your website is no longer there. Let them know what’s happened and help easily understand the reason for a problem.
If you want your website be competitive and successful, you have to own an engaging custom 404 page without exception. It doesn’t only communicate the occurred error message, but also gives solutions and options for further navigation. Don’t let your users feel lost. Take them with you. Let them explore your website. In the roundup below we’ve featured 35 amazing and amusing error pages. You may use these artworks as a source of inspiration; hopefully, this showcase has something for everyone.
35 Amazing and Amusing Error Pages
Newspond
Colors and content are really well-balanced. Bright-yellow ring against a deep-black background shows that something is wrong. But you can easily find the solution to how to avoid this closed circle, click on the mysterious image on the top of the page and the problem is solved.
Hootsuite
Informative 404 page with a detailed explanation of why the error has happened. In order to help the missing owl come back home click on the button ‘return the homepage’.
Critical Zero
Criticalzero.co.uk error page is made in a marine style and in a laconic but effective way provides necessary information on how to go to the page you really need.
Playr
According to the samurai policy, if there isn’t a page that you are looking for you have to do a ritual suicide, in Japanese – Seppuku. But always be yourself and don’t follow bad habits. Press the link below the picture and go to the master page. Playr.pl team has a good sense of humor.
CSS Remix
This crying guy shows the reaction of some Internet users when they can’t find what they want.
GDZLLA 404 Page
A 404-error page can also look funny and amusing even if it showcases menacing Godzilla. Here is an awesome example.
Denise Chandler
Oh, you are definitely not in the right place! Denise Chandler presents an outstanding 404 page with useful tips for the site owner and for visitors who lost their way.
Heinz
The 404 error page for the best-known ketchup. Informative page with the useful direct link to the start page on the upper menubar.
Wulffmorgenthaler
People in tech-support are always calm and patient. Don’t you believe it? Look at this “steady” man. Really awesome artwork by wulffmorgenthaler.com.
Henrik Hedegaard
The main hero Homer offers you two ways of making up your mind, you can press “Home” or “Contact”.
DJ Case
Dj-case features a really stylish, functional and user-friendly 404 error page. It will surely keep users on the web-site, find new visitors and communicate with the constant ones.
Kochatelier Berlin
Fresh toasts on the clear-white background are perfect a design solution for the cooking agency. Use “About us”, “Homepage” and “Contact” buttons to find what you need.
Duoh
Do you like puzzles? Here is the one for you. Creative and skillful 404 error page with navigation menu under the colorful picture, which leads you to the news, portfolio and contacts sections.
I Love Typography
Amazing chocolate-pink palette scheme with stunning typography that makes viewing of the 404 page really pleasant and even palatable.
Chelmsford Library
Don’t give up, Chelmsford Public Library will solve the problem and find the right page, cause its team likes helping people to find the information.
Jamie Huskisson
Jamie Huskisson communicates with ‘lost’ visitors using imagery.
Amoderneden
Amoderneden.com connects with its visitors through the cute sheep Charlie.
Theo-Theo
So many stop signs in one place! Stop, look around and come back to the homepage!
What is Blik
What’s happened? No one knows, but the page you were looking for is….no more here. Creative approach to design a 404 page.
Marchansenstuff
This awesome funny face makes me laugh loudly and sincerely! I’ve returned to it several times! Amazing!!
Mikekus
A grey hissing screen inside your monitor. The TV-set with the program that couldn’t be found.
Shaping The Page
Pretty grey elephant against a blue background looks desperate, it wants you to press the button “take me home”. Help him
Forrst
This error page has a design that manages to make a good lasting impression. It also includes a useful search box.
Mailchimp
Such an amusing and unusual appearance of the page. Humorous animation tells users that something has happened. And, yes, it’s the error!
9gag
This is a social image bookmarking website. Its error page is without usual numbers, the numerals are written. Really creative decision.
Crush Lovely
The error page communicates through emotions, a funny curious dog lost in space as well as visitors to this website.
The Bold Italic
Stunning clear typography is presented on this stylish and elegant 404 page.
Travis Neilson
It looks like you broke Travis Neilson website, you can use menubar to put everything in order and find home.
Kilian Muster
Kilian Muster uses quite an extended serif font stack for his design. Philosopher-Skeleton is thinking how to find the right solution and get to the master-page.
Pieoneers
This error page combines vivid imagery and playful typography.
Habrahabr
There are two laughable aliens on this error page. They offer you a search link to find your loss.
Carsonified
Do you have a temperature? Oh, no it’s something with the carsonified page, 404 error! Bright outstanding design with sparkle elements!
XHTML Kitchen
The plate has been broken – the page has been deleted or removed. XHTML Kitchen makes sure you don’t feel lost.
Hugs for Monsters
You’ve done something wrong, broken the page and now it would be better to be careful! This error page hates you! Really creative artwork with bright design by hugsformonsters team.
Chris Jennings
You can use the button “visit homepage” to get to the page you’ve been looking for. And pay attention to the “inspirational” words below the picture.
Conclusion
If the standard error page usually irritates visitors to the website, a creative custom 404 page has the contrary effect, it entertains, attracts and even makes users smile. It’s strange that till this time no one has hit upon inserting “share” or “retweet” buttons on a custom error page, so that people can share their positive experience of a funny and amusing artwork with users and friends. Maybe, you’ll be the first one to put this idea into action?
And, finally, an eye-catching and striking error page is a great chance for your site to get into a roundup similar to this one. So, go ahead and create your own “error” masterpiece.
- James,
- March 9, 2011
/Very funny links.
We love these. An amusing 404 page is a nice touch.
- Rebecca Smith,
- March 9, 2011
/Thank you, James. I’ve also got a lot of pleasure selecting these funny error pages.
- Andrew,
- March 17, 2011
/I agree. These are great! I like the brain slug… ode to that Futurama episode.
Here’s one we just put up on my company’s blog: http://carwoo.com/blog/404 .
- Andy Reff,
- March 9, 2011
/love the great collection of 404 pages and there is some very good inspiration here for designers/developers looking to spice up a bland 404 page.
- Brandon Cox,
- March 9, 2011
/Nice! I love the reaper… but I don’t fear him. I created a kind of Alfred Hitchcock meets Angry Birds thing on my own… http://brandonacox.com/blahblah. The picture was taken by my little daughter while waiting for the Doctor to come in.
- mcpDESIGNS,
- March 9, 2011
/Haha a lotta good finds here… Been looking for help making something funny / interesting to do for my last website Gameproven’s 404 page… Thanks rebecca!
- Rebecca Smith,
- March 9, 2011
/You are welcome, mcpDESIGNS :) Wish you good luck and inspiration in designing your own “404” page :)
- Bonjour,
- March 9, 2011
/Great collection!
And for see every morning a new creative 404 error page
Last thing, today an amazing Russian 404 make the buzz on Twitter : http://proteys.info/404/
- Tim Soulo,
- March 9, 2011
/Hey Rebecca, that’s an awesome selection!!
Will you go out on a date with me? :)
- Jacob,
- March 10, 2011
/Nice article but pardon me although it’s interesting and unique to design your own 404 page, I think its one page that you don’t really want other to find. The time would be better spend to design other more “important” page, do you think, Rebecca?
- Terrance,
- March 10, 2011
/Nice selection…
Here is my attempt and one… http://www.proplan.co.nz/error
- Rebecca Smith,
- March 10, 2011
/Cool, the dog looks confused, but so cute :)
- Mikey,
- March 10, 2011
/That design attributed to Denise Chandler is the standard GoDaddy (hosting) 404 page (although perhaps Denise was the original designer?)
- Rebecca Smith,
- March 10, 2011
/Hi Mikey!
No, Denise didn’t design it.
But the idea is awesome :)
- Harish Kurup,
- March 10, 2011
/Liked the Hootsuite 404 page, and that cute milk carton..was funny…
- Rana Mukherjee,
- March 10, 2011
/Nice collections of 404 error page.
- Pushpinder Bagga,
- March 10, 2011
/here is another one for ur collection – http://www.pushpinderbagga.com/404
- Rebecca Smith,
- March 10, 2011
/really creative :)
- Michael,
- March 11, 2011
/This article inspired us to put ‘something’ up instead of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad webserver default. So now groucher.com has something a bit more friendly using its mascot (http://groucher.com/onextrapixel). But something else is happening on our 404 that this article didn’t really cover. What should happen behind the scenes on a 404 error? Our 404 logs the error, recording the URL that the user was looking for (along with referer to watch for broken links, etc). As time passes, the 404 statistically analyzes what’s been gathered to ‘guess’ what the user really wanted (based on common misspellings, etc.) and presents that to them as a choice instead of ‘canned’ defaults. We also have a report showing the most common 404 requests so that we can create real pages for those URLs and minimize user frustration. Thanks for the inspiration!
- Lakis,
- March 11, 2011
/hehe really nice and funny templates but honestly whats the reason of making such an interactive 404 page. At the end you might confuse the visitor to not realise that he reach a 404 page :)
- Nicolas Andrews,
- December 24, 2012
/Great list of templates. My favourite is that one with the dog :)
- Honlapkészítés,
- March 13, 2011
/I think the best strategy is not only the creativity on design – so I agree with Michael. What he describe is useful.
- Mihai,
- March 17, 2011
/Please add https://github.com/errror
- Mehboob Talukdar,
- March 18, 2011
/really very nice………………
- Rebecca Smith,
- March 25, 2011
/thank you, Mehboob :)
- Gregas,
- April 3, 2011
/Great list of 404 design.
For more inspiration check out Inspiraaz
- Karl Mootman,
- June 20, 2011
/My favorite is by far the razerzone.com 404. It’s a pure wonder : the guys who made the site are so confident you’ll never end up on a unexisting page, if you get to it, you can upload your picture and be a part of the ‘404 all of fame’ (that shows on facebook)
(http://www.razerzone.com/404)
- Nikos Eleftheriou,
- January 19, 2012
/Great list of templates. I am against 404 errors and I can eliminate them for you, but always will be new. So pick up your template and if you need help in eliminating them you can find me.
- Cairn Emmerson,
- May 3, 2012
/Some great 404 pages there. It’s almost worth mispelling URLS just to try them out. :)
- Andrey,
- July 27, 2012
/I like that Mail Chimp 404 page. I also found pretty cool “Back to the Future” 404 page here: http://www.parkplacetexas.com/404
- Branden,
- December 8, 2013
/The Heinz ketchup example seems to be one of the most loved around the web.
Some others that got us inspired: http://lockerz.com/404 (w/ parallax effect), https://www.titleist.com/404 (golfers will sympathize), http://www.eharmony.com/404/ (broke our hearts), http://www.sportingsolutions.com/404 (for football fans). The example from the Vasa Museum is Stockholm is beautiful: http://www.vasamuseet.se/404.
Here’s our own attempt: http://theinformr.com/404/. Any one have any ideas of how we can improve it for visitors? Ultimately we don’t ever want them arriving at this page…but…404’s happen.
Thanks for the round-up Rebecca!
- Ledger Note,
- June 8, 2015
/There are a few out there that I really love that I didn’t see in this roundup, like CSS-Tricks and Blizzard, where the monitor is busted or the page is torn and the code underneath is showing. It’s like breaking the 3rd wall in the film industry. I saw one where you can play a game of Pacman as well. My personal favorite, because it’s mine and was inspired by a handful of these 404 lists is ledgernote.com/dat-404-doe/ where elements come to life and begin dancing to our theme song. Thanks for the post, it helped me out when I was in need.