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!
