We have a HTTP request timeout implemented in our mobile app, and we display an error popup when the response doesn't come on time (we will put the timeout somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds).
I want to display a friendly and informative message to the user, but without scaring them too much, and without putting too much technical jargon.
There are multitude of reasons why the timeout can occur:
- user has poor internet
- user is traveling by metro, and temporarily has poor internet
- our server is slow
- some failure in the middle of the network
so I'd like the message to cover them all.
We can start with
There was a problem with your request. Please try again later.
but it's not very actionable (no info to the user what and why went wrong), and moreover the user might not understand what "request" stands for.
I am thinking about something like "make sure you have a good network range" but I don't know how to write it in a friendly way.
The case of "no internet at all" (radio disabled / airplane mode) is a separate thing that I can handle in a separate message (for now I put Problem with internet connection. Please make sure that your device is not switched to airplane mode
)
What is your advice for the informative error message?
408 Request Timeout
? “The client did not produce a request within the time that the server was prepared to wait. The client MAY repeat the request without modifications at any later time.”