Having Words.
Corrective and dry, never red and shouty. The error appears beside the field, after you leave it, in a sentence rather than a code.
Check the highlighted bits.
Corrective rather than shouty. The message sits beside the field it belongs to, in a sentence, after you have finished typing.
How this one behaves.
Beside the field
Not in a summary at the top.
On blur, not on keystroke
Nobody wants to be corrected mid-word.
A sentence
Not "invalid input".
Never only colour
Icon and text as well, for anybody who cannot see the red.
The design note.
Validation that fires on every keystroke is hostile. Validation that appears only on submit is wasteful. On blur, beside the field, in a full sentence, is the answer and has been for a decade.
- Beside the field — Not in a summary at the top.
- On blur, not on keystroke — Nobody wants to be corrected mid-word.
- A sentence — Not "invalid input".
- Never only colour — Icon and text as well, for anybody who cannot see the red.
The other states.
Loading
Loading a trailer. It pairs safely with Germinating for the spinner, so the two puns never collide on the same…
Coughing Up
Blunt about money. Naming the pain reduces cart anxiety rather than increasing it, which is counter-intuitive and well-evidenced.
Shaking On It
A handshake deal, not a transaction receipt. The most under-used screen in e-commerce and the one people actually read.
Germinating
Progress framed as growth, never as a percentage. A percentage that stalls at 94 is worse than no percentage at…
Fallowing
"Nothing growing here yet. On a farm that is deliberate. On a website, less so." Always with exactly one route…
Trespassing
"You have wandered off the footpath." With a map back to the main sections, and the badger — which is…
Cocking Up
Uses Clarkson’s own documented words after the 2023 cider recall — "we completely cocked up". Owning the failure is the…
Straying
"You have lost signal. So has most of Oxfordshire." Which is true, and is the correct tone for a rural…
The whole set.
Fourteen states, each named, each with a rule.
What people actually ask.
The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.
It does not. Every commerce control here is a placeholder and no card details are collected anywhere.
In this build, none that leaves your browser. The basket is held in memory and forgotten when the tab closes.
