You know the email. It arrives on a Friday afternoon:
"Hi, the website is broken. Can you fix it?"
No URL. No description of what "broken" means. No browser, no device, no steps to reproduce. Just vibes and a vague sense of urgency.
You reply asking for more detail. They reply Monday. You go back and forth twice more. By Wednesday you've spent 40 minutes on a bug that took 8 minutes to fix — once you actually knew what it was.
This isn't the client's fault. They're not developers. They don't know what a browser console is, they've never filed a bug report in their life, and they genuinely believe "it's broken on my end" is helpful information. Your job is to make it easy for them to give you what you need — because they're not going to figure it out themselves.
Here's how to do that.
What a Useful Bug Report Actually Needs
Before you can train clients to report bugs well, it helps to know what "well" looks like. A good bug report gives a developer everything they need to reproduce the issue without asking a single follow-up question.
That means:
- What happened — a short description of the problem (not "it's broken," but "the checkout button does nothing when clicked")
- Steps to reproduce — what they did before the bug appeared (go to this page, fill in this field, click this button)
- Expected vs actual — what should have happened, and what happened instead
- Browser and device — Chrome or Safari? Desktop or iPhone? This matters more than clients realise
- URL — the exact page where the bug occurred
- Urgency — is this blocking them from doing something important, or just mildly annoying?
You don't need all six for every bug. But the more you get, the faster the fix.
Template 1: Send This to New Clients Before Any Bugs Arrive
Get ahead of the problem. Send this when you onboard a new client — or any time now if you haven't already.
Subject: How to report website bugs to us
Hi [Name],
When you spot something on your site that doesn't look right, here's the quickest way to get it fixed:
Send us an email with:
- What you were trying to do
- What happened instead
- The page URL where you saw it
- What browser and device you were using (e.g. Chrome on a Windows laptop, Safari on iPhone)
- How urgent it is — is this blocking something important, or can it wait?
A short screen recording is even better if you can manage one — it saves a lot of back and forth.
Thanks — the more detail you give us, the faster we can fix it.
Plain, short, no jargon. Clients can actually follow it.
Template 2: Reply to a Vague Bug Report
When the "it's broken" email arrives anyway (and it will), use this to get what you need without sounding frustrated.
Subject: Re: [their subject line]
Thanks for flagging this — we'll get it sorted.
To fix it as fast as possible, could you send us a few quick details?
- Which page were you on? (If you can copy-paste the URL, that's ideal)
- What were you trying to do when it happened?
- What browser are you using? (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge)
- Desktop or mobile?
A short screen recording showing the problem saves a lot of time if that's easy for you.
We'll pick it up as soon as we hear back.
The key: friendly, not accusatory, and gives them a numbered list they can answer in 90 seconds.
Template 3: The Slack or Quick-Message Version
If you communicate with clients over Slack or WhatsApp, a shorter version works better than a formal email:
No problem — to fix this quickly, can you tell us: which page, what browser (Chrome/Safari/Firefox?), and what you were doing when it happened? Screenshot or screen recording if you have one. Thanks
One sentence. Still gets you the critical info.
Before and After: What This Actually Changes
Bug report without a template:
"The homepage isn't loading properly on my phone."
What you have to figure out: which phone, which browser, which part of the homepage, what "not loading properly" means (layout broken? images missing? blank page?), and whether this started happening recently or they've just noticed it.
Bug report with a template:
"On my iPhone 14 using Safari, the homepage hero image doesn't load — just a grey box. Happens every time I visit. The rest of the page looks fine. URL: yoursite.com. Not urgent."
What you have to figure out: nothing. You can reproduce it immediately and push a fix.
The Even Easier Way
Templates help. But they don't fix the underlying problem: clients still have to remember to use them, and you still have to chase the ones who don't.
Lantern takes a different approach. Instead of asking clients to follow a template, it captures all of this automatically — the URL, browser, OS, screen size, and device — the moment they click "Report Bug." Clients also record a short Loom video showing exactly what's wrong.
The bug report arrives in your Lantern dashboard with everything already filled in. No follow-up questions. No template. No email back-and-forth.
The widget lives inside the client's WordPress admin or Umbraco backoffice, so clients report bugs from exactly where they found them — without opening a new tab or remembering a process you told them about three months ago.
Lantern's Individual plan starts at £12.50/month with a 14-day free trial. The Team plan is £30/month flat for unlimited clients.
The Short Version
Clients give bad bug reports because nobody told them what you need. Fix that now:
- Send Template 1 to every client on your roster this week
- Keep Template 2 handy for the next vague report that lands in your inbox
- If the back-and-forth is a recurring time sink, Lantern captures all the context automatically so templates aren't necessary
The goal is to stop debugging the bug report before you can debug the bug.
Simple bug tracking for agencies. No credit card required.