Imagine designing a great email marketing campaign, only to have most of your recipients lose interest because of the microscopic text size on their screens. Or generating demand from a social media campaign but losing out on conversions because of unnavigable landing pages that do not adjust to a device’s screen size.
With 9 out of 10 Americans owning smartphones and 75% of consumers checking their emails on their mobile devices, ignoring user experience on mobile devices is akin to a brick-and-mortar store turning away most of its customers before they even enter the door.
Campaign strategies need to include optimizing emails, landing pages, and websites for various screen sizes and keeping visitors engaged. Responsive design provides the solution.
What is Responsive Design?
Responsive design is the process of designing emails, landing pages, and websites that adapt to the end user’s screen as well as its orientation. It uses fluid layouts, flexible grids, responsive images, and CSS media queries to ensure that your emails and website landing pages render correctly on the end user’s device display. It even delivers a seamless viewing experience if a user switches the orientation of their device from portrait to landscape mode.
Why is Responsive Design Important?
Emails, landing pages, and websites are a critical part of a potential customer’s journey to conversion. The longer they spend with your content, the more likely they are to turn into strong leads and convert.
Viewing content on desktops is easy because of the large screen size. However, when users access their emails on their mobile devices, things can get a little tricky. Text, images, and buttons are much smaller, and thus harder to navigate and click.
Apart from the device itself, email clients (the programs that emails are viewed on) also display emails differently. So, an email that is formatted for Gmail will not look the same on Outlook, for example.
Similarly, landing pages need to render quickly and efficiently regardless of the device used to access them to provide a consistent user experience.
Lower Bounce Rates
Research shows that even a 0.1s improvement in loading speed can increase conversions by 10%. Mobile users are even more impatient. According to Google, as page load time goes from one second to 10 seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing increases by 123%. Without fixing this, you can lose out on conversions even when potential customers make it to your landing page.
Better User Experience
Forbes reports that 88% of users are less likely to visit a website after they’ve had a bad experience. Since your landing page is often their first interaction beyond email and digital marketing, it’s vital that your landing page delivers. Google recommends having fewer than 50 individual pieces of content on your mobile page for an optimal user experience.
Higher Credibility
Stanford research shows that well-designed websites with great user experiences build credibility with potential clients. Responsive design helps your website’s landing pages look clean and professional to build the trust necessary to generate leads.
Improved SEO Rankings
Google uses mobile-first indexing for its SEO rankings. Optimizing landing pages for mobile gives them a better chance of ranking higher.
Future-Proof Pages
New devices flood the market every day. Responsive design means your landing page and website adapt to the latest technology without revisiting the design.
Responsive Design Best Practices
Responsive emails and landing pages must be carefully planned to suit the needs of your target audience and their devices. A few elements to consider include:
Mobile-First Design
You want your content to look great whether it is viewed on a 6.5-inch screen or a 20-inch one. Similarly, it needs to account for screens with different resolutions. The size of the screen will determine the breakpoints your page needs for a clear flow. Design breakpoints for different standard screen sizes, like mobile, laptops, and desktops.
Designing emails and landing pages for the smallest screens first allows you to structure and prioritize content so that vital information appears first. It also helps design a mobile-friendly navigation system right from the start.
Responsive Images, Logos, & Fonts
Use responsive images to optimize load times and enhance user experience. Use SVG images for icons or logos. Their small file size also helps optimize page loading speed and performance while still looking good on screens of all sizes.
Font sizes for mobiles may look too large on desktops or vice versa. Choose a font size that is user-friendly for both.
Touch-Friendly Buttons
The ability to click that all-important CTA button easily is an important aspect of emails and landing pages. Interactive elements like buttons and links need to be clearly highlighted with enough space around them to prevent them from being tapped accidentally as users scroll on their smartphones. Another option is to turn all links into click-friendly buttons.
Similarly, typing is difficult on mobile devices. To make landing pages even more phone-friendly, keep your forms short and offer dropdowns as much as possible.
Test Across Devices
Test your responsive design across multiple devices and screen resolutions to ensure it is working as intended. You should also check it against different email clients and browsers and tweak it as necessary.
Optimize Your Engagement Rates
Great user experiences can boost your engagement rates and drive conversions. Make the most of your marketing efforts with well-designed emails and landing pages! Contact the experts at 4Thought Marketing today to get started.
