Way back in April 1999 the "Cluetrain Manifesto" nailed the concept of honesty and transparency in on-line copy, and probably predicted the easy-going, tone of voice that many sites are falling into...
"Markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked.
Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do."
Now, whilst many sites have their own tone of voice guidelines, it doesn't seem to have reached the twilight world of their error messages. Bad error messages seem to have a few things in common:
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They pop up on the critical paths where a gentle touch is vital (email sign-up, shopping carts)
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They are in red
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THEY ARE SHOUTING AT YOU IN CAPITALS
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They use the inaccessible language of legal professionals ("...that requires correction??")
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You are being told off
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You feel stupid and humiliated
Most of the time it's not even an error, for goodness sake. It's because the web site was not clear enough in its instructions, or its bad navigation...that's an "oversight message" or an "I'm terribly sorry we've confused you" message.
Here is my all-time favourite. It's for a car manufacturer that really should know better.
It's in the middle of a key process (brochure request) and it must be doing more harm than good. I'd love to know if anybody in the marketing team has EVER looked at the drop off point for this page. I'd love to know if anybody has ever done the maths on the "cost per rude error message" affecting sales per year. Here's my calculation based on the assumption that 1 in 20 people who get a brochure take a test drive and 1 in3 of them buy a new car (a reasonable industry assumption)...
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1,000 Visitors per week start process
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10% leave site because you annoyed them
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That's 100 losses a week
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Or 5,200 visitors a year
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Which is 260 test drives
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And 86 car sales
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At £12,000
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Cost of Rude Error Message £1,032,000 a year
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Time to correct rude error message - 30 seconds
Now, how about that for a quick, big win?