Over half of all email opens happen on mobile devices, and that number only continues to climb. However, opens are high, clicks and conversions are lower on mobile compared to desktop computers, in part because of design mistakes. These rates are rising as marketers figure out how to optimize email design for mobile, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
If your email design is not yet designed for mobile, or you suspect it could be better, avoid these eight mistakes…so more of those opens become clicks, conversions and cash.
- Don’t forget that you’re working with a much smaller screen—much. This is perhaps the biggest consideration you must take into account when designing for mobile email. What does that smaller screen mean in the way of best practices? Lots.
- For one thing, you have less room for content and imagery above the fold. In addition to the smaller screen, you have smaller attention spans to work with too. Your emails have to rock. Period.
- You also have less real estate in general. Sure, you can ask people to scroll and scroll, but should you? No. You’ll need to tighten, tighten, tighten text and keep imagery to a minimum…and then put a lot of work into your landing page, because that’s where you’ll need to drive people if you have more to say than room to say it.
- Don’t forget about scrolling. There’s no way around it on a tiny phone, unless you’re doing a stand-alone promo with a clear CTA. However, beware the long scroll. There is a limit to how much you can expect people to do with that thumb!
- Don’t use small fonts. No, not because your audience is aging, but because email triage is a reality you’re dealing with and you don’t want to give your recipient any reason at all to delete your email at a glance. A larger font is immediately more appealing on a smartphone screen compared to a small one, because it’s more user friendly.
- Don’t use columns. This seems like a no-brainer, but I include it here just in case: Only use a single column when designing for mobile marketing. More than one column turns into a long scroll when rendered on a mobile device. Limiting your design to a single column will reduce your content too, and with mobile email marketing, less really is more.
- Don’t forget about contrast. You want to use more contrast in your design because a lot of people keep their phone screens dim to prolong battery life between charges. Remember what I said about larger fonts? A higher contrast results in a more user-friendly email on mobile too.
- Don’t cramp your layout. Using more white space is another design consideration for greater appeal when marketing on mobile. That increased use of white space has the same effect as the larger font and higher contrast: It’s more appealing to the eye at first glance, and therefore more likely to help you get those eyeballs to stick around long enough to draw someone into the content.
Although content matters more and testing matters most, design still matters in mobile email marketing. Give email design the attention it requires to be effective despite the limitations of small screens and fat fingers, and watch those clicks and conversions climb.
Art by Justin M. Buoni // Just Justin Art
Words by Scott Hardigree // Email Industries