Everyone knows that websites can go offline. From the smallest little website to the huge websites operated by major Fortune 500 companies. It’s simply a fact of life that people have to get used to.
At Elite Answers we spend tons of time and countless resources safeguarding our servers, creating redundancy, drafting emergency plans, etc, etc, all in an effort to make sure that when our customers want our service it is there for them. And, in the vast majority of cases it is (…goal achieved!), but I’d be a liar if I said we never have even the smallest hiccup.
The equation is rather simple, websites run off of computers and anyone who has ever touched a computer knows that they can crash.
Even with the best backup plans that could possibly be designed, a few minutes of downtime or an error here-and-there is bound to crop up over the years.
When catastrophe does strike and a website is down for a few seconds to a few hours, it is important to communicate that back to the users of that website. The “not knowing” what is going on is often the worst part of the experience when someone goes to their favorite site and finds out it isn’t there.
That is why showing an informative error message is so important.
If a visitor to a website just sees a dreaded “404 Page Not Found” error or an “Internal Server Error” message then they don’t know what to think. How long will this website be offline? Do I have to wait seconds, minutes, days or hours?
But, if instead, the website has a friendly “We’re doing routine maintenance” or “Something unexpected happened, but we’re working on it”, then at least that is being conveyed to the website visitor.
I recently went to update my Twitter status and the website was offline. Instead of getting a nasty error, I saw this fun graphic. I think Twitter has the right idea with this message because not only does it convey that things will be back soon, but it is simple, clever, creative, and humorous.
Personally, I think this looks a whole lot better than a nasty default error message. Don’t you agree?