We live in a multi-channel world — but not all actions that we, as marketers, ask people to take are really made for all channels. Think of a long, multi-page survey, which is a fine customer experience on a large screen but a nightmare on a small one.
To address this in email messages I’ve used ‘show and hide’ to provide different calls-to-action based on screen size (on a large screen you see the link to take the survey; on the small screen you have a call-to-action to remind yourself to take the survey when you’re in front of a large screen). But there’s not always a responsive design email (0r even an email at all) involved in a transaction. So what’s a marketer to do.
Here’s one answer from EmojiKeyboard.org — I was tickled when I saw this message in the app store and even happier when I saw that it had worked…
I was using my iPhone to read an article, 20 Free Chrome Add-ons that Will Improve Your Life Immediately, on Thrillist (I had clicked through from their newsletter).
The Emoji Keyboard extension caught my eye. It adds a pop-out keyboard with the latest and greatest emoji to make it easy to include them in emails, comments, chats and (I’m hoping) word documents (I am working on an email campaign for a client and I want them to include emoji in the subject line — need a way to show them what I mean in the word document I am writing).
So, without thinking about the fact that I was on my iPhone, not my large screen, I clicked through and it took me to the Chrome Web Store.
Here’s the thing: not only was I on my iPhone, the link opened in Safari (not chrome) — 2 strikes against downloading this app.
But no fear. See the message at the top about sending yourself a reminder?
I clicked on it and it opened an email message with a note and the link.
All I had to do it fill in the email address to send it to and – whoosh — it was off. A few seconds later it landed in my inbox.
Simple? Yes. Smart? Yes. Why don’t more companies do this? It takes time to think it though and to develop the mechanism to make it happen.
I will think of this the next time I’m half-way through a 20-page survey on my iPhone (ugh!).
And I hope that you will think of this the next time you’re working with an action that may not be the best customer experience (for one reason or another) on every size screen.
There’s enough bad user experiences out there – let’s try to create more good ones together!
