How to make your website look more expensive 💫 - Part 3: Customise your 404 page
Every website has broken links. Someone fat-fingers a URL, an old page gets deleted, a link from three years ago points nowhere anymore - it happens on every site, no matter how careful you are! What separates a site that feels expensive from one that doesn't isn't whether this happens. It's what the visitor sees when it does.
By default, most website builders show a generic "404 — Page Not Found" screen: plain text, no branding, no way forward except hitting the back button. It's the digital equivalent of a shop with a handwritten "closed, sorry" sign taped to the door. Functional, but it tells the visitor nothing about who you are, and it's often the last thing standing between a mildly lost visitor and someone who just gives up and leaves.
A custom 404 page fixes that. It's a small piece of the site almost nobody thinks about, which is exactly why it's worth thinking about - same logic as the scrollbar and favicon from part 2 of this series.
Why it's worth the twenty minutes
A well-designed 404 page does three jobs at once:
It keeps your brand consistent. The moment a visitor hits a broken link, a default error screen breaks the spell - suddenly they're looking at browser defaults instead of your site. A custom page keeps your fonts, colours and voice intact even when something's gone wrong.
It gives people a way forward. Rather than a dead end, a good 404 page hands the visitor their next step: a search bar, a link back to the homepage, or a nudge toward your most useful pages.
It buys you a little goodwill. A broken link is never a great moment, but a page that handles it with a bit of personality tells visitors that even your mistakes are looked after. That's a small but real trust signal.
What to actually put on it
You don't need much. The best 404 pages are short and useful, not clever for the sake of it. A solid structure:
A clear headline that says what happened - in plain English, not error-code speak. "We can't find that page" beats "404" every time.
One line of personality - a bit of your brand's voice, kept short. This is the one place on your site where a little humour is genuinely welcome, because the visitor already knows something's gone slightly wrong; a light touch reassures them rather than annoying them.
A clear way back - at minimum, a button to your homepage. Better still, links to two or three of your most-visited pages (shop, services, contact), so a lost visitor can self-serve instead of leaving.
On-brand visuals - your existing fonts and colours, plus an illustration, icon, or photo if you have one that fits. It doesn't need new design work; reusing an image or graphic already on your site is enough to make it feel intentional rather than forgotten.
How to do it on Squarespace
Squarespace makes this easier than most people realise, because there's already a dedicated settings area for it:
Go to Pages in your site's Home Menu.
Create a new page and name it 404 - set up a page with all of the above tips; use your branding, add some personality & add in links or buttons to your key pages.
Then scroll down the menu to ‘System Pages’ > ‘404 page’ and change from ‘System Default’ to your new 404 page.
Keep an eye on mobile view while you edit - a lot of 404 pages get built and never checked on a phone, and it's often where visitors land on one.
The takeaway
A 404 page is never going to be the reason someone chooses your business. But it's one of a handful of small, unglamorous details that quietly signal whether a site was built with care - and those details add up faster than people expect. If parts 1 and 2 of this series were about polish, this one's about grace: making sure that even when something goes wrong on your site, it still looks like your site.