Your 404 Page Is a Branding Opportunity You’re Probably Wasting
Most teams treat the 404 page as a technical afterthought. A placeholder. Something you slap together so the server stops returning a raw error string. But here is the truth: no other page on your website gets visited under such emotionally charged circumstances. The user is lost. Slightly frustrated. Possibly about to leave. And you have their undivided attention.
That is not a problem to minimize. That is a brief, captive moment to say something that matters.
The error page is a brand touchpoint
Every interaction a user has with your product is an opportunity to reinforce who you are and what you stand for. Designers and copywriters invest enormous energy in hero sections, onboarding flows, and checkout experiences. Yet a user hitting a dead link is equally exposed to your brand voice, and in some ways more so, because their guard is slightly down and their expectations are low. Exceed them in that moment, and the memory sticks.
This is where UX writing becomes strategic rather than functional. Words chosen for a 404 page are not instructions. They are a signal. They tell the user: ” We are the kind of company that thinks even about this. If you want to explore the underlying principles behind writing that serves both the user and the brand, my earlier piece, The Principles of UX Writing, is a useful companion to this one.
Three brands that got it right
TripAdvisor: speaking the user’s language
TripAdvisor’s 404 page greets lost visitors with “This page just went on vacation. And you should be too.” An invitation replaced four words of the error message. The brand is a travel platform, and rather than apologize for the broken page, it pivots immediately to its core promise: the world is out there, explore it.
What makes this line work is its total commitment to brand perspective. Another company selling software or financial products could never write this and have it land. TripAdvisor can, because it is in the business of making people dream about elsewhere. The 404 page, in this case, does not interrupt the brand experience. It extends it.
Kijiji: humanity, humor, and a little bit of accidental matchmaking
When I worked in PR at Kijiji, the development team scheduled a database optimization that would require taking down several categories and subcategories for a couple of hours overnight. Technically, it was unavoidable. Strategically, we decided it was an occasion.
We spent weeks on that 404 page. The copy was warm and reassuring: we are working tonight, so your experience tomorrow is faster, better, and worth coming back for. The visual centerpiece was a set of caricature illustrations of our actual developers, rendered in Kijiji’s full color palette, hunched over their monitors in cheerful, slightly frantic dedication. Each face was recognizable to anyone who had met the team.
The response surprised us. Users wrote in not just to say they had noticed the page but to compliment specific developers by name. One user asked if she could meet a particular illustrator. Kijiji did not have a dating section. But that night, the 404 page almost became one.
The lesson here is about trust and transparency. Users do not mind downtime if you tell them why and show them the human beings on the other side of the screen working to fix it. Reassurance, education, humor, and on-brand visuals all at once: that is UX doing what it does best.
Pixar: turning a broken link into a piece of storytelling
Pixar’s 404 page long featured Sadness from the film Inside Out, reacting very much in character to the missing page. After the release of Inside Out 2, Pixar updated the page to feature Anxiety, the new film’s central emotion. It is simple, it is straightforward, and it champions the studio’s core skill: storytelling.
The page’s copy reads “Aww. Don’t Cry.” and explains that what you are looking for “may have been misplaced in Long Term Memory,” a direct reference to the film’s internal world.
This is a 404 page design operating at the highest level of brand integration. The error is not just dressed up with a logo and a friendly font. It is fully absorbed into the universe Pixar has built. A user who has never seen Inside Out still encounters a warm, cartoon character and gentle language. A user who has seen the film gets a small, delightful reward for their loyalty. The use of a familiar character and colloquial language makes the page feel more human, helping visitors connect rather than disengage.
What these three examples have in common
None of them apologize. None of them leads with technical language. All of them translate the brand’s core identity into the specific emotional register of a mildly frustrating moment.
TripAdvisor redirects frustration into wanderlust. Kijiji converts inconvenience into a behind-the-scenes moment of transparency and warmth. Pixar turns a dead end into a story beat.
The underlying architecture in each case is the same: know your user’s emotional state, know your brand’s voice, and find the sentence that bridges the two.
Your 404 page should feel like part of your brand: same style, same vibe. Include your logo, a friendly error message, links to popular content, and maybe a search bar or contact information. But beyond the structural checklist, what separates a memorable 404 from a forgettable one is intentionality. Did someone in your team sit down and ask what we would say here if we had one sentence and a small illustration? If not, it shows.
A note on what to avoid
The worst 404 pages are not the boring ones. They are the ones who blame the user (“you have entered an invalid URL”), use cold, technical language in isolation, or, worse, say nothing at all and return a blank white screen. A 404 page should never blame the user. It should use plain language rather than technical jargon and always provide something useful for the visitor to do next.
Humor is a tool, not a requirement. A law firm, a hospital, or a crisis support organization should probably not put a dancing cartoon on their error page. But they can still be warm, clear, and human. The goal is not comedy. The goal is continuity of character.
The takeaway
Your 404 page will never be your most visited URL. But it will be visited by users who were looking for something specific and did not find it, which means they have a need. That need may be frustrating them. Your job is to acknowledge it, redirect it, and, where appropriate, make them smile. Done right, a 404 page can become a piece of brand communications that earns genuine goodwill, sometimes even press.
Spend the week on it. It is worth it. Kijiji is long gone, but people still remember.
Related sources
- Nielsen Norman Group. “Error Message Guidelines.” nngroup.com
- Wix Blog. “15 Best 404 Page Examples to Inspire Your Website.” wix.com/blog/best-404-page-design (January 2026)
- Creative Bloq. “The Best 404 Pages for Clever Web Design Inspiration.” creativebloq.com (February 2025)
- Kontent.ai. “Best 404 Page Examples.” kontent.ai/blog/best-404-page-examples (October 2025)
- Ivanigova, Petra. “The Funniest and Most Creative 404 Pages on the Internet.” Medium (January 2025)
- Ramotion Agency. “Best 404 Website Pages: Practices and Examples.” ramotion.com/blog/best-404-pages (February 2026)
- Link Whisper. “Best 404 Pages: 39 Inspiring Examples of Error Page Innovation.” linkwhisper.com/best-404-pages
- TripAdvisor Support Forum. “This Page Is on Vacation… And You Should Be Too.” tripadvisor.com (June 2021)
- [Your name]. “The Principles of UX Writing.” [publication/link]
