Facebook recently enabled users and companies to claim vanity URL’s such as facebook.com/johndoe as opposed to: facebook.com/ghfjkdkhs456/user/….
To prevent a massive “land rush” to claim as many valuable URL’s as possible, Facebook implemented restrictions on who may register a name and when. Facebook’s poorly managed effort turned into a mess of confusion and misinformation. The published date when smaller companies like mine could register their username was June 29th. I arrived on June 30th, figuring the midnight rush would be over. I visited http://facebook.com/username and started the process. When I arrived at the step to check availability for my pages and selected Maximus Internet, this is what Facebook told me:
“Maximus Internet, LLC is not eligible for a username at this time. In the future, Maximus Internet, LLC will be able to set a username.”
Wow. Thanks for the groundbreaking information. There was a “learn more” link that basically told me what I already knew – I would be eligible for a username after June 29th. After wasting 20 minutes searching the internet for answers, I finally found out on another website that Facebook also requires your business page to have 100 fans. Why wouldn’t Facebook just say that on the initial error message? Facebook is free and very popular, so people will tolerate a certain level of inconvenience, but too often neglected error messages are costing companies more than they think. What if the equivalent happened in your shopping cart on a high value order?
An error message happens when something has gone wrong with a process you want a user to complete, usually becoming a lead or completing a purchase. The information you provide at that critical moment can make or break your relationship with the user. At the point of error, the websites job becomes getting someone back on track easily and in a friendly manner. Don’t leave this critical task in the hands of default error messages that came with your website platform or programmers that don’t understand relationship building. Doing so will usually produce punitive error messages that make people feel stupid and/or don’t clearly explain how to correct the problem. To prevent these issues, you should always complete extensive testing of your error handling process. More importantly, make error handling a priority in your development process instead of an afterthought.
