You 404′d it. Gnarly, dude.
Miranda Capra / Usability / Web & SoftwareThat’s an error message I saw on coffecupnews.org recently, I’m not kidding. I love it!
It has several elements of a great website error message
- It does NOT blame the user
- It has a sense of humor
- It provides some suggestions for what to do next
- It wraps the error message in all of the standard parts of the website – logo, search box, links to the most popular articles, etc.
It could use a little improvement, but not much
- Explain what happened – most people don’t know what a 404 error message is, and “lost at sea” is a little vague, although most people will probably guess that the page doesn’t exist
- Point out in the text of the error message that the site has a search box, although again most people will probably find that on their own.
My favorite error message is still the one I saw on Sesame Street’s website [blog], although the iPhone lolcats app gets the most points for style [blog].
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