15 Creative Maintenance Page Examples to Inspire From in 2024
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Fuel your creativity by taking inspiration from the most creative maintenance page examples.
Setting up an online site and adding beautiful pages is insufficient. It is important to run regular maintenance activities for a flawless user experience. No-downtime maintenance is not always possible! And sometimes, you may need to take your website down to fix the screwed-up things.
In this fast-paced digital world, the infonauts are impatient to seek information. They don’t have time to land on your website to discover that it is under maintenance. Such an event creates a negative experience and hampers the brand image.
You can improve a bit of this by explaining to the visitors why your website is down and when it will be fixed. A better way to do this is through some creative maintenance page instead of a monotonous one that reads, ‘HTTP error 503: The service is unavailable.’
Table of Contents
- What is a Maintenance Page?
- 15 Creative Maintenance Page Examples & Best Practices
- Closure
This blog post will share the best practices for an effective website maintenance page. Also, find the most creative website maintenance page examples you can inspire from! In another post, we covered the best examples of creative 404 pages you may like to read.
But before the best creative maintenance page examples, let’s understand — What is a Maintenance Page?
What is a Maintenance Page?
The maintenance page is a temporary page displayed when the site is unavailable. It informs the visitors that the website is out of service engagingly. It is an alternative to the monotonous error page showing – ‘HTTP error 503: The service is unavailable,’ which that makes no sense to the visitor. The maintenance page is a temporary placeholder that conveys the website outage much better.
15 Creative Maintenance Page Examples & Best Practices
Let’s get back to the main point. You are here for some of the most creative website maintenance page examples you can inspire from in 2024.
Keep Maintenance Page Simple & Clean
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci.
If you cannot find any fancy way of saying that things are not working on your side (site), just say it simply. Sometimes, it is better to go straight. Take the website maintenance page of Apple, for example. The renowned multinational tech giant Apple prefers using a simple website maintenance page.
“We’ll be back. We’re busy updating the Apple Store for you. Please check back soon,” says the Apple store during its maintenance mode. This can be generally seen before their product launch events. Is it the website maintenance or just an attempt to create market hype before the product launch? It is still a matter of debate. Apple knows!
Here’s another creative yet simple example of the website maintenance page of Del.icio.us. The maintenance page of the site mentions what it should be – nothing else!
The web maintenance page provides visitors with a clear and smooth message. It says the team is performing scheduled maintenance and will return shortly. What else can be more simple than that? 😊
Another maintenance page example to inspire simplicity is that of Google AdSense. I must say, “Their maintenance page makes sense!”
When under maintenance, Google AdSense clearly communicates that they are under maintenance. It relieves the users’ concerns about their earnings! Moreover, it also mentions the approximate period of downtime.
Simplicity and creativity are intimately related to each other. Inspire from these simple yet creative maintenance page examples listed above.
Use Maintenance Countdown Timer
Every second of site downtime can be painful if your site is an online store. Informing the customers about the maintenance and expected downtime is important. Using a maintenance timer may help.
Not being a braggart, we also make up the list of the most simple yet creative maintenance pages! We take pride in that. Our creative team decided to keep it simple and informative. It displays beautiful natural scenery in the background with our logo. A simple maintenance note and a timer for our keen customers – What else is needed?
Magento users can also make such creative maintenance pages without coding.
Check out our Magento 2 Maintenance Page Module now! (Highly customizable ready-to-use templates🚀)
Add a Bit of Fun to Website Maintenance Page
Adding some fun to your website maintenance page is not bad at all.
Take the website maintenance page of Ahrefs, for example.
The leading SEO tool added fun and creativity to its maintenance page. Find a snowboarder skating through the valleys holding the Ahrefs flag in one hand!
Cool, isn’t it?
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How about enjoying the cool onshore breeze on a sunny day? Well, that’s what surfers do when the waves are on leave!
The maintenance page of Google wave advises the same to the visitors when it is on maintenance.
Although discontinued a decade ago, the maintenance page of Google wave inspires webmasters with its creative maintenance mode page. It inspires the wave surfers to chill and relax as the wave is down for maintenance.
Twitter’s website under the maintenance page is another example to inspire from. The leading social thoughts-sharing platform shows the following when it is overwhelmed by user tweets.
“Twitter is over capacity. Please wait a moment and try again,” mentions the Twitter website when it is down. It has inspired other website owners through its creative website maintenance pages since 2012.
Look how cool the Twitter maintenance page used to be in 2012.
On its maintenance pages, Twitter also allows impatient visitors to check the website status to see if it’s available then or so.
Atlassian had taken the fun and creativity to the next level with its animated maintenance page. Their old maintenance page of Atlassian was as innovative as their products.
The animated website maintenance page also shows an informative note, “We’re down for maintenance. Be right back!”
Tbh, it’s one of the best examples of maintenance pages!
Last but not least, in this category, the maintenance page of the BlogLines is what you can inspire to add some fun to your website when it is under maintenance. You can find a plumber literally fixing the Lines to make the BlogLines work again.
The plumber says, “Bloglines is down for a little fixer-upper. We will be back shortly. Bloglines will be better when I’m done with it.”
Speak Your Brand Through Maintenance Page
Marketers! Do not miss even a single chance to showcase what your brand stands for. Not even the maintenance pages. 🚧
Let’s look at some of the most creative maintenance pages representing their brand.
Stackoverflow, which is a knowledge-sharing platform for coders, did it in a unique way. You can find some random compilation errors on the Stackoverflow website and a simple website under maintenance notice.
Furthermore, the StackOverflow maintenance page also mentioned the expected downtime on the webpage. Additionally, the links to the status page and their official Twitter page links are helpful to the visitors too.
The next amazing example of a creative website maintenance page is that of the Indian eCommerce brand in the fashion and cosmetic niche. A major part of the company’s customer base includes women that are regular users of beauty & cosmetic products, and the maintenance page of its online store aligns very well with that.
The image on the maintenance page of Nykaa truly resonates with its customer base. “We are the spa for a QUICK BEAUTY UPGRADE. We will be back soon!” mentions Nykaa’s maintenance page.
Soundcloud is another creative maintenance page example. The maintenance page of Soundcloud displays the logo, a cloud half composed of several verticle lines that symbolize sound, along with some creative words.
The maintenance page of Soundcloud is a genius use of metaphor, which reads, “WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS!”
What you’d expect on the maintenance page of a movie-related site? Here is what the Opensubtitles website shows to its visitors during maintenance. Find a famous fictional character in the background of their maintenance page.
Another great example of a creative maintenance page to inspire from is Producthunt.
The product-sharing platform shows a cool cat wearing smart glasses on its maintenance page. It mentions, “Sorry, we’re down for scheduled maintenance right meow”😺
Entertain & Engage the Visitors
Website maintenance can hit hard on the organic traffic as the site is unreachable. The visitor would press the back button and bounce back to find alternatives. But what if you can glue the visitor to the maintenance page briefly until everything returns to normal? Using interactive content on the maintenance page can help you retain visitors in case of short downtimes.
Take the maintenance page of MySpace.com in 2006, for example. The popular social networking website used to have the retro Pacman game on its maintenance page.
The maintenance page also displays a short message about the maintenance from its founder. 😀
Experiment with this maintenance page with your website if you think your visitors will enjoy it.
Closure
Here comes the end of this post. It inspired webmasters and online business owners to add creativity to their maintenance pages. Inspire yourself with some of the most creative maintenance page examples and add a bit of fun to your website. Feel free to comment if you think I missed mentioning any of the websites.
Thanks for reading.
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2 Comments
This is a really cool page. One of the best posts I’ve come across in quite a while. I hope to see more content like this.
Hey,
Thank You For you such Appreciative Feedback!