A professional,
clear, and authoritative voice will always work better for the masses than one that comes
off as pandering or arrogant. These messages are there to help users get back on their feet
and accomplish their task of completing the form, so the quicker and more helpful an
error message is, the more efficiently people can traverse the company website.
Positive reinforcement
Of course, when everything goes well, the form is submitted successfully and the person
hops along their merry way to other parts of the site. Kind of. The only way that person
knows for sure their data was submitted successfully is if the designers of the website took
the time to build a message letting them know exactly that. Without confirmation, users
will be hanging in the wind, wondering whether their information was received, processed,
and accounted for, or whether it was promptly vaporized into digital space dust.
Part of contingency design is letting users know when transactions are successful. This is
exceedingly important for e-commerce sites when customer money (and loyalty) is always
on the line. Most major retailers have excellent contingency design in this area??”they are
very specific about what went wrong, what went right, next steps, and how to get additional
help if needed.
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