Are you sure people get happy about your ”Oops” error messages? Or does it lower their trust in your software..?

This might be a pet peeves for me, so show me I’m wrong. I’m pretty sure I’m not.

All over the web and apps we can nowadays see this ”Oops, something got wrong” error message, at any point, any time. It seems to have replaced the ”Server error” message everyone hated. But really, what’s the difference?

When I ask programmers why they use this ”Oops..!” line the common answer I get is ”we want to have a friendly language with the user”. Really? In what way is this more friendly than ”server error”? The only reason to use ”Oops, something got wrong” is if you have no idea what happened, or don’t bother to test your app enough to give the user some better clue and support.

Very rarely there are cases where the developer can’t find the cause and possible solution for the user. But it takes time and effort to find out different user scenarios and tweak error messages to print some help to the user, so it’s much faster to just write ”server error”, ”technical error” or .. ”oops.. ” error.

I understand this, time is a problem. You just want to get something out of the door. Or you just can’t do the proper testing and investigating to write a more clear message and guidance.

Please just admit that this is the case. ”I didn’t have time to do more”. Don’t pretend the ”Oops” is something different than ”server error”. Users hate this as much. It doesn’t help them. It just annoys and tells them something they already know. Something uhm got wrong. And they can’t get any help getting through.

It’s a pain working with proper error messages. But the reward can be astounding when you do. I have. Your reviews in the stores improves, because people don’t need to contact you because ”the app is not working”. They have got guidance through the error message.

How trustworthy is a service that gives the message ”Oops.. we have no idea what happened.. ”. If you do care about users trust in your product, then probably it’s worth doing something with your error states. Would you like to see this when applying for a bank loan or entering your credit card number.. or buying a car?

In stead of ”Oops, something got wrong and we don’t bother about it really” the user might instead read ”We’re sorry, your message/search/whatever wasn’t posted. This might happen because of <x>. When this happen, you can try to restart your app, reinstall it, restart your browser/phone, check <z> or contact us at <y>.”

Even better, with a nice instructive illustration. If you don’t have much space, which is common in many products, there’s always a way. Talk with your designer if you have one, or try to make something very simple.

If you do put some effort, in some of your error messages, check out the reactions – or the absence of reactions. To help users succeed and get through when using our beautiful creation, isn’t that what’s it all about.. ?

Someone started the trend, but who does it help?