Alert

Alerts display essential messages that require user attention or acknowledgement. They use colour, iconography, and distinct styling to communicate success, information, warnings, or errors.

Writing alerts

Alerts should clearly summarise what’s happened and what a user needs to do.

Follow these rules:

Use sentence case

2–5 words for headings

1–2 sentences of text

Use short, active phrases for headings – ‘Get support’, not ‘Where to get support’

Provide action buttons when appropriate

Clear actions – ‘Retry’ is better than ‘OK’

Clear headings – ‘Check the amount’ is better than ‘Important’

Avoid bullets, paragraphs or text hyperlinks

Example:

❌ Don’t forget We strongly recommend you receive financial advice or guidance before making any decisions that may affect your retirement. Get help now.	✅ Getting advice We recommend getting financial advice or guidance before continuing. <Visit Pension Wise>
Wordy and vague Users need to read the body text to get the point, and have to guess where the link goes.	Short and specific The heading and button make the message clearer – and the content is concise.