Feature: Error message for expired invitations should tell users the invitation expired and what to do
Description: User receives an invitation to verify their email (for a system that isn’t pressing for them) and ignores it for a while. Eventually they learn that they should be using the system, so they search their inbox for the invitation, they click the link and get an unhelpful error message:
(
)
Error
Your email address could not be verified.
There’s no explanation as to why the email address could not be verified nor is there an explanation about what they should do in order to verify their email address.
Use-case: A user was sent a verification email on July 11, it has a (default) 5 day expiry, they complained today, August 31 which is well over a month after it was sent = not even close to just outside the expiration window.
While it would be a much better user experience if they knew when the invitation would expire so that they wouldn’t be surprised that clicking the link wouldn’t work, let’s address the case when they click a really stale link.
- The error message should tell them what went wrong: You waited over a month to try to verify your email address!
- The error message should tell them how to do something about it (without replying to the email, this does work, and we for the specific case will do something). Ideally there should probably be a way for the user to request a new verification email. If that isn’t possible, the message should explain they’ll need to go back to the app/sender in order to request a new verification email.