Friendly Error Message
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on our websites. And they happen in real life. Sometimes it’s because we made a mistake. Or maybe a system failed. Maybe examples of good error messages it really was the user’s fault. Whatever the cause, these errors—and how they
Error Message Examples Text
are communicated—can have a huge impact on the way someone experiences your website or app. Often overlooked, an ill-constructed error error messages ux message can fill users with frustration, and send them packing. A well-crafted error message, on the other hand, can work wonders. It can turn a moment of frustration (abandonment) into a moment
Error Messages Best Practices
of delight (and ideally, conversion). Every error, regardless of who is to blame, becomes a point of friction for your users. Well-written error messages can help reduce that friction. As UX designers, we like to reduce friction. So let’s get on with it. Introducing the 4 H’s So how do we write, or rewrite, our error messages to keep our users on track? It’s not error message text that difficult, really. We just need to consider the 4 H’s of writing error messages. Error messages need to be: Human Helpful Humorous Humble Let’s look at these more closely. 1. Human The number one rule is to make sure your error messages sound like they’ve been written for humans. There’s nothing more frustrating than an error like this one. It sounds like it has been written by a robot. For a robot. Put your customer service hat on—think of your error message as a conversation with your user. Make sure it’s polite, understandable, friendly and jargon-free. The Firefox error message is a better example. Think about your audience. How would you explain the error to them, in human speak? Write those words down. That’s your error message, right there. 2. Helpful OK, so your error message is readable. But is it helpful? The rules to crafting helpful error messages are fairly straightforward. Ask yourself: Is it visible? There’s no point displaying an error message if the user doesn’t even see it. Think about the message size, colour and location of your error messages. Make them prominent. Does it explain clearly what went
Best Error Messages Sonia Chopra GregoryLAST UPDATED June 1, 2015Get more articles like this delivered to your inbox! Follow @FreshSparks Tweet14 Share26 Share4 +14Shares 48So you made a mistake. Or, did the website you were using make a mistake? Either way,
Good Error Message Text
errors are a big point of frustration for web users-we don’t like them and they
Error Message Text Prank
can cause us to bounce away from our intended path. Creating great website error messaging is often overlooked, but it’s important list of error messages to ensuring an optimal user experience.Click To TweetHere’s where to start, and what to focus on for the best error messages:1. Be specific to the user's task.When writing error messages, it’s important that your copy is http://uxmas.com/2012/the-4-hs-of-writing-error-messages customized to the actual error. It can be confusing when a message doesn’t offer any clarity as to what exactly went wrong. This is especially critical if users are inputting personal data or completing a checkout process (it can cost you a lead, or worse-a sale).A more positive experience is to be told the specific problem, and given a way to correct the issue. Concise guidance is necessary to keep users engaged and http://freshsparks.com/user-experience-tips-best-error-messages/ willing to make the corrections. Notice how Dropbox is very detailed in their error alert for an incorrect email address, by requesting the missing character.2. Let users know you’re human.Oftentimes, error messages can sound very technical to a consumer (read: intimidating). Moreover, some errors place blame on the user. It’s more effective to be understanding, friendly, and speak the same language. A good way to incorporate a more human tone to your error messages, is to think about explaining it out loud to someone. How does it sound when you speak it in conversation?Click To TweetIf someone is less comfortable with technology, an error can be a huge roadblock. Reassure the user that they are not ‘talking to a computer'.Error messages are also a good opportunity to utilize icons-it's just another way to humanize your message (since people respond well to imagery).3. Embrace humor in the situation.Although a user may not want a comedic error message when their credit card number isn’t correct, there are some situations where it might be nice to be funny.Keep it lighthearted, otherwise it may seem like you’re trying to cover up a mistake rather than owning up to it. The message should still be informational, clear, and polite. Something went wrong, so tasteful humor is a bonus when it happens. Piccsy uses unique and humorous illustra
Start here for a quick overview of the site Help Center Detailed answers to any questions you might have Meta Discuss the workings and policies of this site About Us Learn more about Stack Overflow the company Business Learn more http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/39101/what-is-the-recommended-wording-for-a-generic-error-message about hiring developers or posting ads with us User Experience Questions Tags Users Badges Unanswered Ask Question _ User Experience Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for user experience researchers and experts. Join them; it only takes http://baymard.com/blog/adaptive-validation-error-messages a minute: Sign up Here's how it works: Anybody can ask a question Anybody can answer The best answers are voted up and rise to the top What is the recommended wording for a generic error message up error message vote 36 down vote favorite 19 What would be the best wording for a generic error message? With generic error message I mean a message for an error that has occured but there are no details on what the error is or how to recover from it. It will be used exclusively as a fallback solution when it is not possible to determine the error either because the server did not sent any additional details or there is error message text a "probable" timeout... and other similar edge cases. It should be aimed to minimize the amount of frustration/anger. I've read a few threads but none of them seems to be 100% relevant Recommendations for good resources on writing good error messages Standardized (web) application error messages? [closed] This is actually a very close match but error reports are out of scope in my case What will be the Best notifications and error messages? Error Message Advice (for asynchronous/background tasks) Generic/vague error messages to pass to spammy users? copywriting error-message wording share|improve this question edited May 4 '13 at 13:32 JohnGB♦ 57.7k19154265 asked May 3 '13 at 15:11 Toni Toni Chopper 8821718 An unexpected error occurred... –Justin Meiners May 4 '13 at 0:07 add a comment| 9 Answers 9 active oldest votes up vote 39 down vote accepted A good error message should: Let you know what the problem is. Make you feel like there is something that you can do about it. Speak like a human, and be a consistent extension of the personality of the rest of the application. For generic error messages, you can't do much about the first point, but you can do something about the other two. Do something that lets the user know that the problem isn't being ignored. Let them take some action such as submit the logs or send an erro
· See all 186 articles based on findings from our e-commerce usability research Subscribe by E-Mail or RSS Improve Validation Errors with Adaptive Messages Jamie Appleseed · February 10, 2015 This is pretty much as bad as it gets. The user is just told their input is invalid with no hints as to why that is or how they can fix it. Form validation errors are inevitable. Yes, they can (and should) be minimized, but validation errors won’t ever be eliminated – they are a natural part of complex forms and user’s data input. The key question then is how to make it easy for the user to recover from form errors. In this article we’ll go over findings from our usability studies on how the wording of validation error messages largely determines the user’s error recovery experience, and how “Adaptive Error Messages” have shown to significantly reduce the user’s error recovery time. Common fields that we frequently observe to cause cause validation issues during testing include: phone number (formatting), state text field (‘TX’ vs. ‘Texas’), dates (month names or digits), monetary amounts (decimal separator, thousand separators, currency, etc) credit card number (are spaces allowed?), and address (street number in address line 1 or 2?). Generic Error Messages When benchmarking the checkout process of 100 major e-commerce sites, we found that most form validation error messages are woefully generic. This is problematic because it doesn’t do much in way of helping the user understand what the error is and how to fix it. Generic error messages tend to run the spectrum from unhelpful to completely useless. For instance, during benchmarking we saw the ‘Phone’ field yield error messages such as: “Invalid” “Not a valid US phone number” “Not a valid 10-digit US phone number (must not include spaces or special characters)” The first error message is obviously the worst as it offers zero help as to why the input isn’t accepted – it just states that the site doesn’t consider it “valid”. The second error message is still pretty bad, in that it just says the input isn’t a “valid US phone number” but it doesn’t hint at why that might be. The third error message is better than the others because it not only states that it must be a US phone number but also indicates that a country code, spaces, or other formatting, will cause the validation to fail even if it actually is a legit US phone