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Error 503

Error 503 is one of those things that really gets to me. A horrible looking message in boring font explains that the service is unavailable – sorry. There’s nothing you can do but wait. This is exactly what you need when you are trying to access some important bit if information. Now is the point where you would refresh the page a couple of times before trying to access the website through a new webpage, and again usually without success.  Here you resign yourself to failure, annoyed at the websites incompetence. However, this is where some companies have been very clever. To ensure there are no hard feelings, a simple branded message will do just the trick. This one from Mintel that I came across this morning made me smile. It has a simple message, no apology but a cute graphic and even contact numbers if you really feel desperate to speak to somebody (although this probably isn’t likely). This attention to detail is what makes the brand experience so much more special and now I don’t mind that I need to wait a little while before trying again, because I feel as though they care. What a brilliant way to make something annoying, a little easier to deal with!