Designing for Mobile Can Boost Your Bucks

According to to Litmus “Email Analytics”, 55% of all email is opened on mobile devices. It’s time for publishers to face the fact that information is being consumed more on the go, and email that is not designed for the mobile world first is doomed for failure.

User Experience
It’s all about the user experience. Understanding what is pleasing to the eye and attention-grabbing to subscribers is vital. There is a lot to be learned from the layout of the email design and how it is interpreted -- to ensure a second glance and not an immediate dump into the trash.

For starters, it’s imperative to create a responsive design that will optimize viewer traffic. We’re all familiar with responsive web design, and email is no stranger to this veneer. The methods to generate responsive email design are practically scientific. A effortless change of the font size, layout, adding padding, modifying color, navigation, scaling of images, hierarchy, and alteration of content can make all the difference. 

Imaging
Imaging also plays quite a role in responsive email design. While background images can often become muddled into an untidy heap, they can be used as an asset if the right configuration is used for the screen size (we’ll learn about this next). Shorter background images can actually condense an email length, and let’s be honest, brevity is key when reading an email on a mobile device. To this extent, resizing images to be formatted correctly on a smartphone (and introducing high-resolution for Retina displays!) goes a long way in reducing the number of emails that are deleted based on a poor or unimpressive appearance.

Email Newsletters
To bring in an example of appearance and how even the slightest amendment can optimize email responsiveness, we turn to email newsletters. Email newsletters that are intuitive with touch-friendly designs provide the best user experience and yield the best results. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when designing a responsive template:

- Real Estate on a mobile device is very valuable, so keep it clean and emphasize the essential points. Simplify your layout - a single column layout will allow for easy navigation and eliminate any need to zoom or scroll.

- Many people turn down the brightness level on mobile devices to conserve battery, so using a strong contrast of colors and avoiding small fonts will achieve better results.

- Don’t assume images will be displayed. Many devices turn OFF images by default. Always include alternative text to indicate to your subscribers what the image is even if it is not displayed. It’s always smart to preview your emails with images off and on to secure best experience for the user

Media Queries
Moving on from aesthetics, we turn to media queries, a crucial tool in heightening responsive email income. Media queries can discern the faculty of a device (be it a desktop, tablet, or telephone), comprehending the size of the screen, and reconfigure guidelines (that is, which CSS style is necessary to accomplish maximum beauty) for the email to be compatible with the screen dimensions. No longer will an email that is beautifully designed for a computer be a hodgepodge of text and images on your phone. Media queries run the gamut of being both basic and intricate; however, unfortunately, not every email provider is congruent with this restructure. That said, be aware of which email clients accept media queries!

We all know it takes a split second for a mobile viewing experience to go from fantastic to horrendous. Your goal should be to maximize usability and engagement. Put yourself in the position of your subscribers. You use one hand, one finger, just like everyone else.

For more examples, visit our Web site at www.goldlasso.com. Examples and recommendations are fully covered in Gold Lasso’s “The Email Monetization Playbook”. Click here to download this definitive guide for publishers -- offering more than 150 tips for optimizing email monetization with concrete examples, illustrations, and pitfalls to avoid.