What Is Your Website’s Bedside Manner?
Are the error messages, search results, and form instructions on your website written to convey humanity and caring? Or do they feel more like the time’s up buzzer on Jeopardy? How you word things matters.
// By Kevin Kashou //
A patient spends several minutes filling out an appointment request. They enter their contact information, look up their insurance details, and explain why they want to see a doctor. Then they hit submit.
“Invalid submission.”
Now what? Was something missing? Did any of the information go through? Do they need to start over?
A different message would leave them in a better place: “We couldn’t submit your request yet. Please check the highlighted fields below.”
It is a small change, but it gives the person something useful: a way forward.
Healthcare organizations spend a great deal of time thinking about how to greet patients in person. The language on their websites deserves that same care. Before someone speaks to a receptionist or meets a clinician, they may have already encountered dozens of instructions, labels, and messages online.
Together, those words give a website its bedside manner.
Read on for nine tips to make often-overlooked error messages more human, because the right wording is a form of caring.
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