Hear less about the dreaded “blue screen of death” these days as, presumably, computers are getting better – but unfortunately website errors are still commonplace.
Whether they are as a result of a user incorrectly typing in a URL or a problem with navigation or functionality, error screens (or HTTP 404 pages, as they are officially known) are a huge source of frustration for consumers.
There is no solid set of rules as to what a website should do with the design of a 404 page but, as Econsultancy outlines rather well, best practice should centre on being informative, speaking in the right non-techie language, throw in a search box, provide useful navigation and enable some form of tracking so developers can work out what might be going wrong.
Thus why when it comes to the user experience of travel sites, some – SOME – travel brands put a lot of effort in to their 404 pages, not least because it is often a way of showing the personality behind a brand but also can be helpful for when a consumer gets stuck.
There are some pages which, alas, appear not to have had much thought attached (if any at all).
Such as EasyJet…
…or LateRooms…
Luckily most sites have put some thought into what will greet users when they hit a 404.
Booking.com, in all the examples tried, manages to redirect people back to a search page, often with rather leftfield results…
Emirates, keeping it simple and elegant, inevitably…
Helpful from Lastminute.com…
Arguably somewhat restrained from the usually rather playful KLM…
Carnival keeps it sensible…
TripAdvisor injects a little bit of humour…
Hilton plays with images a bit…
So does VRBO…
And Lonely Planet…
And Utrip…
Here, the tagline from Flight Network seems somewhat ironic…
Starting a Lost theme, from Expedia…
JetBlue heads down the emoticon route…
Priceline keeps it on-message with the rest of its marketing…
AirAsia ignores what some might consider to be subtle cultural references…
Speaking of which, this from Gidsy…
TripFab sticks with the less than subtle language from its infamous poke at the rest of the industry…
Wanderfly takes the Lost idea to its logical end…
Hotel Tonight misses the Loch Ness Monster, but…
Budget Travel gets very creative…
Meanwhile, iTravel2000 gets a bit confused (was in the UK when trying various error URLs)…
So, there are no guidelines in particular, except perhaps stay on-brand, be helpful, try and divert the fact that a user has hit an error page when they probably didn’t want to.
The look and feel of such pages can be extended throughout a site, of course, as Room 77 shows when users find themselves with no results returned to a search…
So there are some cute, some very good and some extremely ugly 404 pages littering online travel brands.
What would be interesting to discover is what happens downstream in terms of traffic from some of these sites, especially those without helpful navigation back to where things (hopefully) are working.
In the meantime, thanks to all who made suggestions for the above. Add more in the comments below.
NB: And yes, we know, ours isn’t great. We’re working on that.
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You missed out Cleartrip’s error page — http://www.cleartrip.com/abc
Also Urban Adventures: http://www.urbanadventures.com/abc
You kidding – you actually missed ours off? Ours is the best ever!! http://mytab.co/press-kit
May recommend getting lost on http://socialconcierge.info/abc
So why don’t we start a whole new group on Facebook. Error pages we like….
I have a huge selection of idiotic web page errors. These include some very big names – airlines and OTAs especially. the best ones are the ones that are COMPLETELY illogical. The ones that berate the user for arriving at the page or are SO patronizing that you want to slap the website in the face.
Vote for the annual 404s. It would be a bit like the raspberry awards that would be given out at the same time as the Webbies.
Cheers
Timothy
The Live My Journey 404 page is pretty sweet too… http://livemyjourney.com/abc/
well, we try to keep it simple and fast loading for our 404 page, so here it is http://qiito.com/abc
i think Hilton, Utrip, Wanderfly, and Budget Travel are my faves. but it’s hard to pick.
@sean – Wanderfly and Hotel Tonight for me.
Ours is here: http://www.purpletravel.co.uk/abc
Bummer! It’s what it says on http://www.yadig.com/abc
Martin
Went with haiku – http://www.travelfish.org/tnooz
Ours has become quite popular – We’ve had over 20 sites ask to borrow it.
http://www.smartdestinations.com/boomer
I know that it’s not a travel site, but they are well travelled. The Rolling Stones website’s 404 message gives you an 8-minute long live version of `You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, which is surely one of the best 404 messages on the net http://www.rollingstones.com/error-message
One of the few that we run – http://www.worldnomads.com/404
I’m working with Chinese OTAs, and some of them trying to download an “aspx” file on their 404 page. (facepalm)
You missed ours as well
– http://www.excursiopedia.com/en/guides/abc