One of our favorite things to do with this blog is to hand it over to one of our WhatCounts teammates to give you so some amazing insight into what they know and how they apply it to email marketing. Today, Adam Sukenik, one of our amazing designers, is breaking down best practices that you can apply to your mobile email marketing. Enjoy!
As an email designer, it can be frustrating to watch our web designer friends play with the latest CSS to make breathtaking websites while we are stuck attempting to cram modern design into late ’90s HTML. One of the most frustrating web design trends that doesn’t quite translate to email friendly HTML is text overlaid on graphics.
Now, I’m not saying it’s impossible, but overlaying HTML text on an image in email is difficult to code, requires a few hacks, and, in the end, still doesn’t render across all email clients (but what does these days?!). Because of this, it is recommended to create your images with your overlaid text as part of the image. This gives the designer creative freedom (think premium fonts and blending effects), and with more and more email clients automatically downloading images (check out this awesome resource from Litmus for a deeper look at image blocking), the fear of your subscribers missing the content of your email is dwindling.
Mostly pulling from iOS and Android Human Interaction design guidelines, we’ve compiled 5 UI best practices to take into consideration when designing a textual graphic that needs to be legible when scaled down to a mobile device screen. It’s important to note that we don’t recommend including large chunks of text in images. Limit your copy (as you should in most email!) to a few, short lines. Keep in mind that these guidelines are built around a 600px wide hero image that shrinks to 320px in width at its smallest.
5. All Copy Should Be At Least 30px In Size
Considering that we are shrinking our hero image almost 50 percent to fit on a mobile screen, it makes sense to use copy at least twice that of the 15px minimum font size stated in iOS and Android mobile UI guidelines. Any smaller and you risk illegible type.
4. Include At Least One Button-Style CTA Within The Graphic And Give It A Height Of At Least 80px
Best practices state that mobile user interfaces should utilize buttons of 40px or more in height. Again, a simple math formula (40 x 2) tells us that a height 80px is optimal for CTAs in your 600px wide graphic. Remember to style your CTA with a branded, high contrast color to help it catch your subscribers’ eyes and use “action” copy (“Learn More,” “Read Now,” etc.).
“Start Exploring” is 30px in size, while the button is 80px. Note: these images are not to scale, but notice how everything on the mobile device is still fairly legible.
3. Be Wary Of Using Light-Weighted Fonts
Light-weighted fonts are being used more and more to give brands a clean, luxurious feel. But beware, these skinny fonts tend to pixelate heavily when being scaled down and are generally harder to read. Leave the smaller copy of the graphic in regular or bold-weights to make sure it’s legible on a mobile screen.
Okay, okay. So this light-weighted font is a little extreme (right), but as you can see, it’s hardly visible when scaled down.
2. Utilize ALT Text To Convey The Graphic’s Most important Content When Images Are Off
As mentioned previously, more and more email clients are automatically downloading images in emails. However, there are still clients that default to the infamous little red “X,” or worse — they don’t let the subscriber know there should be an image there at all. To combat the necessity of displaying images, use ALT text to communicate the graphic’s most important content. You can even style it! Check out this older, yet still relevant blog post from Litmus that offers an in-depth look at stylizing ALT text.
At the very least, utilize standard ALT text (center). Experiment with adding styling like font, font size, and color to your ALT text (right).
1. Save Your Textual Graphics As PNGs
PNGs, JPEGs, GIFs – each image format has its pros and cons for use in email HTML. For textual graphics, saving your design as a PNG is recommended. Yes, they are larger in file size than JPEGs, but they do a much better job preserving text quality. Although JPEGs are better suited for photography containing tons of colors, they tend to leave artifacts around text that make it appear more blurry, hurting legibility.
The JPEG (right) shows loss of quality around the text.
Be sure to test your email to your own mobile device to check legibility. Or, if you want to test legibility before touching code, register yourself on InVision for free, upload your graphic at 320px width and share the screen with yourself via SMS. InVision is an awesome tool to share designs, receive feedback, and test mock ups on mobile devices – I highly recommend it (they have a great newsletter full of design resources too)! Of course, if you already have your email coded out, there’s no better email testing tool in the land than Litmus.
Also check out 4 Quick Reasons Every Email Marketer Should Be Using Litmus and Subject Lines: To Emoji Or Not To Emoji.