Hello,

When you start your initial design concept there are areas of the design that you don’t always consider initially, as the site is designed around what concepts the client needs to get across on the homepage.  Most websites follow the same page structure throughout having the nav and content positioned in the same place to maintain a consistent design throughout the site.  There are one or two exceptions to this consistent design where you are able to think outside the box and one of those is a 404 page.

404 or page not found is an error message that is returned when their is not a page to return with that url because of a mistyped url, broken link or moved or deleted content.

Below are some great examples of 404 pages with great designs to help enhance the rest of the users experience.  So rather than be disappointed they couldn’t access the page they were looking for they are impressed by the design and creativity.

Bluedaniel

jhuskisson.com

Heinz

Also with your design it is a good idea to utilise Google’s Enhanced Url, this enables the user to type in what they believe the page to be called to see if they can find the page.  You can also customise the 404 widget to work with your current design.

I think all in all 404 pages should be creative as someone has visited your site and not found the page they were looking for so to help keep them on your site having a great design and Googles enhanced url will help.