Use an alert to inform your audience about your site’s recent relaunch and provide options for site visitors who can’t find what they need.
- Alerts is brief and clear.
- Respect your audience’s time—tell them what has changed and what to do about it.
- Avoid using humor or ingratiating language.
Special Note: Navigate to our Alert microcontent documentation for further guidance on how to work with alerts
Set the alert to be published before launch. Unpublish the alert one month after launch. If your agency has cyclical traffic, unpublish the alert after the next anticipated traffic spike.
Use the Notice alert type. Place the alert sitewide—not every site visitor starts at the home page. Offer a way for users to contact you by linking to your contact form. Provide a link to the archived version of your site on archive.org.
Do:
- Use plain language. Aim for grade 6 or lower reading level.
- Be concise
- Offer constructive advice or next steps
- Provide a link to the archived version of the site on archive.org
- Use alert type Notice
Don’t:
- Beg for forgiveness or patience
- Be humorous
- Use alert type Warning—this is for more serious alerts
Sample text
| Field | Suggested Text |
|---|---|
| Title | Website update |
| Details | We recently updated the [agency name] website. Pages and documents may have moved. Use the search box, visit the [home page], or [contact us] to report a problem. |
| Link text | Access an archived version of the site |
How to find an archived version of your old site on archive.org
- Navigate to archive.org, the Internet Archive
- Enter your old agency URL into their “Wayback Machine”
- Select a pre-relaunch date from the calendar display
- Copy the URL address from the address bar
- Use this URL address as the link in your alert
Work with Microcontent: Alert
Navigate to our DX Training Video guide for further visual guidance.
Alerts tell site visitors about important, time-sensitive information:
Location closures
System maintenance
Brief updates on services related to newsworthy events.
Alerts can also provide a call to action or link where users can find more information. You can put an alert on one or more specific pages, or show it sitewide.
Alert text is concise. It describes the problem or situation plainly and offers a constructive solution or link to learn more. Respect your audience’s time and get to the point. Avoid clever language and humor.
Unpublish alerts when they aren’t relevant.
There are two kinds of alerts:
- Notice. Use a notice to provide time-sensitive general information. Most of the alerts you create will be notices. Notices display an information icon along with the notice text.
- Warning. A warning is more serious than a notice. Reserve these for emergencies only. Warnings display an exclamation mark icon along with the notice text.
Guidance
When to use an alert:
- When your new site launches
- Location closures and hours changes
- When services or applications are down or undergoing maintenance
- Weather-related warnings and closures
- Resources related to high-profile events in the community
- Crisis or major emergency
When to use something else:
- To provide detailed information—use news, event, or basic page
- To announce press releases or other regular news
Note: If you wish to learn about creating alerts, refer to the instructions on how to create and add alerts for further guidance.
Fields and settings
- Title. Title of the alert, displays first in the banner. Up to 50 characters. Required.
- Details. A space to provide brief details about the alert. Minimal text styling tools, including links. Up to 175 characters, which is one or two sentences.
- Alert type. Notice or warning. Required.
- Link. Link URL and link text for any link you provide for users to find out more. Link text is limited to 50 characters. Use this field to link to a full news post or basic page with further information about the alert.
- Show site-wide. Check this box to display the alert on every page on the site. When this is checked, it overrides alert locations.
- Alert locations. Enter the names of pages where you want to display the alert. Use this field to target your alert to specific site pages where it is relevant. No limit.
- Published. Check this box to publish the alert. Published alerts immediately display on the site. Uncheck it to unpublish the alert. Unpublished alerts do not display on the site.