Your ‘page not found’ can pay rent

_{Day 143/100}

Hey—It's Tim. 

Let’s talk about the most overlooked page on your website.

I’ll give you three guesses:

1. Not the homepage.

2. Not the slick new About page.

3. Not that “blog hub” you spent six coffees designing.

It’s the 404 page.
The one that pops up when your stuff breaks and the user sighs.

Turns out the people who buy from you see it more than the ones who bounce.
Why? They’re doing the homework.

Clicking everything.
Comparing prices.
Hunting proof.

So when they finally trip over a broken link, you’ve got two options:

“Oops, sorry, nothing here.”
or
“Hey, you’re close. Here’s the golden path back to value.”

Pick the second.

One tip you can ship before lunch

Treat your 404 like a micro-landing page:

• Brand it. Same voice, same colours. (Lego’s mini-fig gets this right. The Kon Mari method does this with style.)

• Help fast. Add a search bar or three “most-loved” links.

• Offer a handshake. Live chat, free trial, newsletter - just one clear CTA.

Or, in the case of Magnt. Just roast the bad typing. I love this one

One tip you can ship right now

A broken link is forgivable. A lazy 404 isn’t.
Treat the page like a mini-landing page:

• Brand it. Same voice, same color, same confidence.

• Help fast. Search bar, top nav, or your best money pages.

• Offer a handshake CTA. Newsletter sign-up, live chat, free demo — pick one, not ten.

Some of my favourites

Can’t just drop this and leave without some inspo

A great place to start is https://www.404s.design 

But some favs.

Dribbbles showcases their designers

I’ve talked about this one before. It’s a fav for a reason.

Carwow’s is literally a game…

I wonder if you could make something like this in Lovable, and then just embed it.
Uh, did I make myself a new weekend project…?

Figma’s is just cool.

Doesn’t offer anything, Bit it’s just fun.

What I did with ours

I swapped our vanilla “Page not found” for a branded fallback with a CTA to annoy me on LinkedIn.

I get a few every month. And those convo’s always end up in a trial. I’m getting around 60% conversion to a paid plan from talking to those people.

I think I’m going to have to make a Penfriend game though now…

Ship your better-than-nothing 404 before you close the laptop tonight.

✌️ Tim "does his own QA" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. True story: the idea for our 404 came to me at 2:17 a.m. when I was first building the site.

I think it’s due for an update though.

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.