You spend weeks, months, and perhaps years of creating a product with a great user experience. Regardless of whether it’s an application, a web site, a client project, or something else, it’s important that you devote time to creating something incredibly good.
Then, why do not you think about the user experience of the electronic messages you send about that product? Just put some text in the message, and send it. Yes, you may have a person writing the content, but pure content is not what makes the user experience good.
ASPECTS OF USEFUL EXPERIENCE
Peter Mourville’s famous honeycomb experience can be used for electronic messages (although the importance of some of the aspects will be shifted). Every aspect of the honeycomb fits perfectly with others in order to guide you through the process of creating a fantastic user experience.
Useful
Any electronic message you send must be handy. And that does not mean that it should only be useful to you as a sender. First and foremost, it must be beneficial to the recipient. If there is no real purpose behind, except the obvious – to buy something – then you should not even send it.
Usually
I know. Usability of e-mail is complex. Every email client does not visually process the HTML e-mail in the same way. Some of them make a real mess. Your images may not be displayed until the recipient gives them a different instruction.
Basically, email can hastily turn into chaos. This means that testing with different clients is a very important part of the process of creating a usable email. Always do everything you can, for even when none of the images is full and the entire layout is distorted, the recipient can grasp what is what you had in mind to do it.
It’s desirable
This goes hand in hand with useful. Does your recipient’s e-mail offer something he wants?
It may be an offer, information, a free product, or anything else the recipient would like to receive.
Easily found
“Easily found” does not mean the same in the context of email. Here, you should imagine this to be the equivalent of “not ending in an unnecessary email folder”.
There are many tools (such as Mail-Tester, IsNotSpam and Lyris ContentChecker for Email) to check how much your mail can end up in someone’s unnecessary email folder. Use them.
Accessible
Accessibility can be overlooked when designing e-mail. But there are things you can do to improve accessibility for a large number of users with disabilities.
Creating a text-only version is one of the ways, because it gives the user the ability to read the content of the e-mail without design elements, if it’s so convenient.
A few of the other great ways you can make your mail more accessible, and in doing so improve your user experience, is if you pay attention to the colors and contrast of the page, set all the links in a way that you can click on them ( but not cluttered with other links), make it easy to click on all the links and buttons with a call to action, and work with a clear hierarchy of information.
Confidential
Confidentiality is one of the most important aspects, which, on the other hand, is easily performed. Here are the basic rules:
follow the rules for spam;
do not send out untrusted senders;
do not use untrusted rows;
do not use untrusted text;
place clearly in the links where the links are.
Worth
The most important aspect of the user experience design, regardless of the medium, is the value. Everything you create must be valuable to your user. This means that they must provide them with something, which may be information, or a free product, or a special offer, or even something less immaterial.
The other key is that the value is directly related to the return on investment. An investment, in this case, is the time and effort you invested. If the recipient needs to work for something, because your part is poorly designed or has problems with functioning, then the value of what it gets must be higher. The amount of effort he puts in the electronic message must be lower than the value he receives.
In other words, if you offer someone a free e-book (which is always free), then the work he needs to do should be minimal. A dysfunctional link is sufficient to reassure it.
However, if you offer something that is worth, say 6000 denars, then you can also make it a little more disturbing.
Of course, regardless of the value, the less effort the user has to make, the better the user experience will be. The goal is to be “easy”.
OPTIMIZATION FOR MOBILE DEVICE
One of the most important things you can do is optimize for a mobile device. People do not send tons of emails from the phone, but, therefore, they read many messages on the phone, or to be more precise, browsing many messages.
If your email is optimized for a mobile, it is less likely to end up in the trash before opening it to a computer. That means they left her to look at her later, and they would probably throw her away.
Just because your mobile conversion rate is not great does not mean you need to ignore mobile devices. Do not underestimate the number of people who first look at the cell, and then scrutinize them on a computer.
TEST, TEST, AND PACK, TEST
One of the best things about email marketing and their design is that you can test using many modern platforms for such marketing. A / B testing is essential for most electronic mail so they can be easily used.
You can start testing the text in the subject field, testing different formats and types, and seeing what the best opening rate will be. Follow the progress and results as you send, so you can continue to create according to what the results will give you.
Then, switch to the mail itself. Test the text, layout, images, call action buttons … Refine each sent mail, and follow and analyze the results. In addition to conversions, pay attention to the cancellation rate.
Test and compatibility
There are tools like Litmus, which allow you to check the compatibility of multiple platforms and email clients. Use them to check if your email is being read regardless of the way your client reviews it, paying attention to the most popular sites.
Conclusion
Just because email happens outside of your main product does not mean that you should ignore the user experience for it. This is the first and basic touch of the user with your product. And remember, they chose to receive e-mail from you. In essence they seem to have asked you to promote them. Do not spoil it with a bad user experience!
