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One was an e-mail newsletter, one was a Forrester white paper offer and one was a sales alert from an e-commerce site marketing a range of New Balance footwear.
In all cases, small-seeming design changes would up causing significant changes in the ways that consumer’s eyes looked at the e-mail, including how many words they read, how far they scrolled down and whether or not they clicked on anything.
The last point is the most fascinating for me - and may be the most surprising for your design team. After all, your e-mail goal is probably to get clicks that your site can then convert, right?
When we set up our e-mail samples at the lab, although they were real-life creative samples, none of the hotlinks were “live” at the time. So, when consumers scrolled over the e-mail with their mice, they didn’t get that little “click-able link” hand icon that you would normally see.
You might think that this would discourage clicking. In fact it didn’t appear to at all!
Every single e-mail we tested got plenty of clicks. However - and this is the fact you need to share with your e-mail design team - many clicks were not on areas of the creative that normally would have been click-able.
People don’t limit their clicks to just underlined text or specific buttons. Not one bit.
In other words, when people click on your e-mail they don’t always carefully figure out where the click-able link is. They just bang away at their mice. As with the Web pages we’ve tested, some of the most popular ‘non-click-able’ clicks are on images, including product hero shots and photos of people.
How should this effect your design?
Option #1. Make your entire e-mail click-able
Unfortunately, if you make the entire e-mail click-able your campaign will be stopped as spam by some filters. So if you plan on that, be sure to invest in e-mail deliverability and certifications services beyond your routine broadcast software or service.
Option #2. Make all photos and images click-able
This is the better option, but it does mean you’ll have to figure out where hotlinks should lead. If you have photos or images such as happy models or article author headshots on the e-mail, should those clicks go to the article or top sales item you are offering or should they go to information about that human being?
In any event, designers who ‘dress up’ an e-mail by slinging stock photos on them should be discouraged unless you’ve tested both ways first. Your wasting attention and clicks on images that may not further your purpose. (If your branding relies on stock photos, you’re in trouble anyway).
Option #3. Add more right side and top-of e-mail hotlinks
Many of the click patterns we noticed were right-side and top-of-creative clicks. Consider adding extra hotlinks at the very top (aside from or perhaps in place of your “please whitelist us” copy, which can be lower down) and at the right side of your copy.
Hotlinks buried within text, especially in the middle of a paragraph, may not work as well. Move those to the edges of your copy - an consider making your headline click-able as well as your “read more” link.
Posted on 03rd July 2008