I was asked to rewrite a handful of messages to address a few critical errors that were blocking our users. I collaborated with a UX Designer and UX Developer to address errors and alerts more holistically.
Problems
Due to multiple experiments a product team had conducted in a major employer flow, front end changes no longer corresponded to our back end. Errors were interfering with users completing key tasks.
Also, there were no existing guidelines for creating error messages, so individual engineers were writing them as needed and creating inconsistency (through no fault of their own) across our experience.
Solutions
I collaborated with a Senior UX Developer and Senior UX Designer to audit error messages and understand what triggered them.
Then I rewrote vague error messages to make them actionable.
In collaboration with my developer and design partner, we convinced our product manager to run a comprehensive test with the new error messages.
I also created a set of guidelines others could use when drafting error messages. These were eventually added to our Design System.
Outcomes
A $7.8 million annual revenue impact directly tied to the new, rewritten error messages. Because more people were completing the flow, more employers were sponsoring their jobs.
I created a set of guidelines (including defining types of errors and best practices for writing them) others could use when drafting error messages, which were then adopted for the Design System for all of Indeed.
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Other managers used these results to show the impact of content design to leaders to help staff their teams.
I wrote a blog post about this project for Indeed.Design.
I won the inaugural SMB Way Award for my work.
What my team said
“Yvonne championed improving our user experience. She created guidelines and also had a stat-sig $7.8M annual revenue impact from her test of rewriting all the validation error messages for new and existing job posters on Indeed.”
– Product Manager
“Yvonne also demonstrated her expertise and influence by sharing her revenue-boosting work on error messages with other content designers. I was able to cite her valuable data in a presentation to our VP to demonstrate the value of content design.”
– UX Content Design Manager
Moon Phase Media 