I’ve noticed recently a much more friendly, informal tone in the error messages being used online. “Proceed anyway” and “back to safety” from firefox… Hotmail, junk mail… Chrome, this might hurt… The style of language being adopted in online messaging recently has become a lot more friendly, and less formal. The firefox and Chromes messages… Continue reading Tone of voice in warning messages
Tag: online observations
Pet hate. Being asked for information that could be found by another mean
I’ve written about this before, I vaguely remember it, but I’ll write about it again, as its so important. There are many ways of wasting users time online, some of them completely avoidable, with a little thought. Below is an example from a survey that I had started to fill in. To be honest I… Continue reading Pet hate. Being asked for information that could be found by another mean
Mandatory form fields are sometimes just greedy
I cancelled my subscription for a website, and received a survey from their “head of customer service” asking me to fill in a survey to let them know why I had cancelled so they could improve their service. Fair enough. So I started to fill it out. I had no particular love for this company,… Continue reading Mandatory form fields are sometimes just greedy
Security authentication questions
I always love to see how companies adapt security questions in order to protect their customers when trying to retrieve their passwords. Some stick with the traditional: What is your mothers maiden name? What is the name of your favourite sports team? But these would be quite easy to find out if you did a… Continue reading Security authentication questions
When single sign on gets scary
Single sign on is getting more prolific around the web, with many sites allowing you to use your social media credentials to log into a site. However, what happens when you realise that when you go to a website for the first time, they already have your details? Thats what happened to me when I… Continue reading When single sign on gets scary
Youtube advertisers, you’ve got 5 seconds of my time. Make better use of it.
I listen to a lot of music on Youtube, and it seems like I am forced to listen to an advert every second song. Irritating as it is, very very occasionally, it will be something I’m interested in. Fortunately, Youtube allow you to skip the advert after 5 seconds. However, very few advertisers are using… Continue reading Youtube advertisers, you’ve got 5 seconds of my time. Make better use of it.
Email newsletters design bad practice – Asda
I received an email today from Asda containing just one large image. Although this might look fine on a desktop computer, with a stable internet connection, for someone on the move, this is a real barrier to consuming the information. If the email contained text, then the user could consume some of the content without… Continue reading Email newsletters design bad practice – Asda