4 tips for optimal viewing on mobile phone

These days, your default email template design is responsive. Now it’s time to work on the contents of your email. That also determines how your email comes across and certainly on a mobile phone and tablet. Also consider the following settings, therefore.

Email width

Every email marketer learns on day one: an email should have a width of 600 pixels (px). With the increasing screen resolutions of desktop computers and increasing diversity of devices, this may seem out-dated, but it is not. Often, emails are scaled by browsers or apps, for optimal viewing of the email. And otherwise the extra space obtained is automatically filled with white space, a folder structure or widgets on the left and right. We still recommend an email width of 600 px, therefore.

Font size

The font size of an email determines the legibility of the text. Even though the email is scaled, a too small font reduces legibility. We recommend a minimum font size of 13 px.

Images

The use of clear images is essential for current smartphones with high resolution. But the bigger the picture, the longer it takes to load and the more data traffic is required when opened through a 3G/4G network. Moreover, large images are not displayed at all by some email clients. Two tips for attaching images:

• Make sure your pictures are sharp. Retina displays have a higher pixel density, but do not necessarily require larger images. By adding more compression, you can see more details on retina displays because of the higher resolution, at the cost of a normal picture with little compression.
• Images are always displayed in pixels. By using media queries, you can scale the image for all mobile clients.

Buttons

Through call-to-actions you are trying to persuade the recipient to visit your website, to make a purchase or to perform a different action. These are often placed in buttons. Take the following into account:

• Make sure the button is big enough to tap with one finger.
• There is enough white space around the button, so that it stands out and is easier to tap.
• Rounded corners of a button are often perceived as softer and these buttons are more easily recognised as an object we can do something with than rectangle buttons with sharp corners.