Customer experience
Keep customers informed while they wait.
Design clear waiting, progress and recovery states so customers know whether an online task is still working and what to do next.
In a hypothetical professional-services firm, a customer uploads three documents and selects Submit. The button changes colour, but the page gives no progress message. After twenty seconds, the customer clicks again and wonders whether the firm received one request, two requests or none. A digital journey is not only its starting page and confirmation screen. The time between them shapes whether someone trusts the process enough to wait, continue or recover.
Name the state clearly
List the stages a customer may encounter: preparing, uploading, checking, submitted, completed or unable to continue. Use plain labels that describe what is happening rather than a generic spinner.
Do not use “complete” when the website has merely accepted information for later review. If a human still needs to check the request, say that. A precise status helps the customer understand what has happened without implying a commitment the business has not yet made.
Give useful progress without inventing certainty
Show progress that the system can genuinely support. A file count, completed step or visible list of received items can be more useful than an estimated percentage with no reliable basis.
Tell the customer whether they can safely leave the page, whether their entered information will be retained and what happens if the connection drops. Where a task may take longer, explain the expected next event: an on-screen confirmation, a reference number or a message through the agreed channel.
Avoid asking someone to submit again unless the system can distinguish a retry from a duplicate. Disable repeated actions where appropriate, but keep the page responsive and explain why the control is temporarily unavailable.
Design the failure route as part of the journey
When something fails, retain safe information where possible and identify the affected item or step. “Something went wrong” leaves the customer to diagnose your process. A useful message explains what was not completed, whether anything was received and the next safe action.
In the hypothetical upload journey, one rejected file should not make the customer guess whether the other two arrived. Show the accepted items, identify the rejected one and provide a route to replace it without restarting the whole request.
Test slow and interrupted journeys
Test with a slow connection, a large allowed file, an interrupted upload and a repeated click. Use synthetic information. Check the message, keyboard focus, screen-reader announcement and narrow-screen layout as well as the technical result.
Record where customers could reasonably misunderstand the state, then correct the wording or interaction at that point. Rethink's website conversion review can help identify these uncertain moments and turn them into a practical improvement brief.