The whole company redid its error messages. I had the most products.
After Wix’s CEO emailed about a bad error message in production, every team was asked to redo its error messages, with the Writers Guild leading the effort.
My part
- I was the writer covering the most products at Wix at the time, with the highest ratio of PMs and engineers per writer.
- I worked with 10+ R&D teams and dozens of back-end and front-end developers.
- Together we mapped hundreds of error messages: their frequency, cause, solution, and the UX/UI.
- Outdated or generic messages turned into helpful ones that give users a way out and follow Wix’s voice and tone.
MessageHow oftenCauseRewrite
“Something went wrong.”HighPayment provider timed out“We couldn’t reach your payment provider. Try again in a minute.”
“Error 400.”MediumRequired field left empty“Add a phone number to save this contact.”
Example rows, not real Wix messages. The real map had hundreds.