These days just about everyone is aware of the importance of making friendly and highly visible error messages, and even if not every site takes this to heart, most have it on their to do list. However, this trend can't stop with error messages or conversion buttons. Getting visible messages out there at all stages of the user experience is essential to a positive customer experience and sometimes that means setting aside design preferences to get deliver message in a way people actually see.
What exactly do I mean? Well let's take a look online banking curiosity of wamu. wamu has a wonderful interface for online bill pay which I've used for years but it lacks a few important messages which has caused me and people I know to make double payments or miss a payment altogether.
For starters when you initiate a bill pay process you have to confirm the payment even though you've already entered data. Confirmations are great but if you don't know them it's a big problem. Some big red text telling you to click "Submit Payment" with a header message "You have not yet submitted your payment" would be great. Instead wamu shows nicely formatted, really clean looking text with a small button. Not the best for a quick bill pay session.
What would be really slick was if wamu applied a little shopping cart best practice to their bill pay system and sent an email out a day after you bail on making a payment. Something to the effect of "Hey, we noticed you started paying XYZ vendor but didn't complete it, if you meant to pay them, click here to complete the process."
And there are other areas besides final steps that could use some messaging too. Example: If you have a recurring payment setup there's nothing to denote this in your payment page so making a double payment is really, really simple. Adding a little R icon next to those payees doesn't seem difficult in the least.
Can you spot the recurring payee above? Neither can I and it's my account.
The takeaway here? Every step of a process is a conversion step and what customers aren't told can be just as important as what they are told. So take the same philosophy you have with error messages and use it with all of your forms and actions... don't assume people read every word, they don't. Start putting the important steps in a format people can find and you'll notice a decrease in customer service inquiries and an increase in adoption or conversion. And it doesn't matter what your site does, whether you're selling something or just have people using a tool, the more you explain, the better they can use it.
Looking for information on how to optimize your errors messages? Check out this post on noticable errors from Future Now's Marketing Blog.
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