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What would be the right success message when the the user deletes a record?
I could think of the following:
Any suggestions or other ideas?
In many cases the best message is no message ;)
Is there the expectation of success? In these cases the only time a user wants to see a message is when something's gone wrong. Take file deletion in Windows. After the "Are you sure?" question has been answered there's no further message unless the file couldn't be deleted for some reason.
Is there any other feedback that the record has been deleted? Taking Windows as an example again, the user can see that the file has been deleted as it no longer appears in the file explorer. If there's no other feedback then a "success" message might be appropriate.
Does the delete operation take a long time? If you're deleting something from a remote database there may be some time from when the delete request is issued and when the delete actually occurs. There's also a disconnection from the action and the result as the delete is asynchronous. In this case you probably do want a message.
As to what that message should be, any of the ones you list are OK. However, you might want to drop the "successfully" as that raises the possibility of failure in the user's mind. The simple:
The [record] was deleted.
where [record] is the name of what you are deleting is probably all you need.
Additionally the message should probably disappear automatically after a few seconds so the user doesn't have to dismiss it themselves - unless they want to. The only caveat I'd add here is that if the disconnect between the requesting the delete and the delete being reported back to the user is large then leaving the message around might well be a good thing as the user might not notice it when it first appears.
Is record the word the user understands? It sounds a bit database related - is it really speaking to the user in the language they understand - the 'user model'?
If so Record deleted successfully is good.
If not - replace the word record by the 'thing' the user understands.
The word "successfully" means that there is an opposite situation and this situation happens very often and it was the Lucky case when it was done successfully: it was a lucky day for both of us (user and application). :)
Assuming you need to have the message at all (which you very well may not), I'd suggest one further clarification ... Instead of "Product removed" (or deleted), include an identifier for which product -- e.g. "Product 'xyz' removed."
I agree that no message would probably be the best way to communicate success. What is the right success message?
Perhaps what you need is not a message but a hint that some thing has happened. For instance when I click on the text box to start typing this answer the border changed colour. That was enough to let me know that I was successful in selecting the text entry box. Similar hints which are unobstructive and don't take my focus away from the task I am trying to do.
If you want to show that some thing was deleted, having a record count in a corner some where the animates as it decrease its count could be enough to let a user know that some thing was successful. Or more simply, having the item highlighted and change colour when you delete it could be enough. You just need to have some feed back that does not require the user to turn the focus away from what they were doing. It also should not be flashy and distracting.
It really depends on the situation. If the user is viewing their basket, they click remove and the item visibly disappears then no message would be required.
However if the user is in a CMS system with hundreds of records a message such as 'Product removed' would be best.
I think its better to display confirmation message before deletion "Are you sure? or you want to delete xyz product?". Only display error message if something went wrong.
