Download images?
We’re up to the stage with Amigo where we are finishing up the very last things that need doing before the beta can go live. One of those is the ’sign-up’ e-mails that people will receive when they register.
Jason had designed some really nice e-mails using the logo and the ‘Amigo’ colours. But, unless Jason wanted the e-mails to look like a bunch of text sandwiched between some worryingly empty boxes with tiny red X’s in them, then something was definitely amiss.
Of course the e-mails looked crap because the images were turned off. Luckily, we had read David Greiner’s article on Vitamin all about designing e-mail newsletters for real people. In the article he stresses the importance of creating an e-mail that makes sense with or without images turn on.
So that’s what we did. The image on the top is the welcome e-mail with images not downloaded. And the example on the bottom is the same e-mail with images downloaded. Of course the one on the bottom is preferable. But the one on the top is perfectly readable even though the recipient chose not to see the images. They still know where to click, and more importantly they know where the e-mail is coming from.
I applaud your efforts. As a user of lynx, my main beef with people is that they rely too heavily on images, when simple text replacement would work just as well. I’ve gotten in the habit of coding sites for both search engines and for users of text based browsers. Luckily some things apply to both. I applaud your efforts because I never thought about using the same principles within html emails. HTML can make email pretty and I often forget that when things like broken images make it ugly.
Comment by Andrew — August 1, 2006 @ 10:06 pm
I think some spammers have found ways around the image issue, at least in Outlook Express.
Comment by Colin — August 1, 2006 @ 11:07 pm
Here is a link to the article mentioned in the post:
http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/html-emails
I thought others might be interested.
Comment by Stan Hansen — August 2, 2006 @ 2:12 am
Beautiful. Somebody gets it! You guys pwn me.
Comment by Mr Funk — August 2, 2006 @ 2:59 am
Lovely stuff. So nice to see someone putting the effort in to make an email degrade gracefully.
One tiny, small and picky point: the capitalisation of the ‘Bringing advertisers and…’ line is different between the image and non-image versions. Thought I’d mention it in case you hadn’t noticed it.
Comment by Andy — August 2, 2006 @ 7:07 am
You could always go for the far easier option of not opting for hideous HTML emails in the first place and just use plain text - especially if all you’re doing is sending someone a link.
Comment by Paul — August 2, 2006 @ 10:02 am
Yes, please, don’t send HTML emails. Just use plain text. HTML emails are ugly in my eyes no matter how you style them.
At least provide a simplified text version and don’t rely on the email agent to dumb down the HTML, as they usually don’t do a good job.
Comment by Hunox — August 2, 2006 @ 1:35 pm
HTML or Text? Hmmm.. don’t you think that you lose the branding aspect with text only e-mails. I think that’s quite important with a service like a web app. People need to trust and recognise the mail when it arrives. What you do you think?
Comment by Gillian Carson — August 2, 2006 @ 1:50 pm
I like the way Veer does their newsletter/emails. They degrade nicely with images off (they look fine in Gmail - which turns off images by default) and they provide a link at the bottom to the html version with branding and images on their site. I personally prefer text only emails but know that lots of people do like html in their email.
Comment by Greg — August 2, 2006 @ 5:30 pm
Nice! I like your logo, but it’s nice that the non-images version still keeps the color scheme, similar fonts, and general “look and feel” as the original. It’s the little things most people don’t bother with that make all the difference.
Comment by Brandon — August 2, 2006 @ 7:59 pm
Gillian’s right about branding. I’m not sure the text-only crowd here has taken account for that.
And what’s the argument against HTML emails really? Are these people who want text-only emails also using text-only browsers? Do they live mundane, text-only lives? They could use some Amigo colors in their life.
Comment by Colin — August 3, 2006 @ 12:08 am
Gotta agree on the “i hate html emails” whingers. Although whatever you send out should be in the standard “text with with html version attached” format that lets people get the crap version in lynx :)
Comment by Mr Funk — August 3, 2006 @ 3:07 am
“don’t you think that you lose the branding aspect with text only e-mails”
I don’t really think there is a branding aspect with emails, nor that there needs to be. The fact that it comes from “Company X ” is branding enough for me, I don’t want or need a corporate logo or a background image.
Personally, I check my email in mutt, and if someone sends me HTML email then I generally have to bounce it to my Gmail account in order to view it properly. Most of the time I just hit the delete button instead, and that person doesn’t get my business (or whatever else they want).
Comment by Paul — August 3, 2006 @ 11:07 am
I would much rather see a plain text email, i think they are so much easier on the eye and alot easy to understand. With the HTML emails, i think there is alot more for the eye too focus on rather than the important message its self. When i sign up to a service and i have to activate all i like too see is a hi and welcome message and a link, no more no less, as half the time my eyes will just look for the link and click it.
Comment by James Deer — August 3, 2006 @ 3:13 pm
I’ll agree that HTML emails can tend to be very cluttered and messy, but if you look at what Carson Systems is doing here with Amigo, I don’t think that’s an issue.
Comment by Colin — August 3, 2006 @ 8:23 pm
“I would much rather see a plain text email, i think they are so much easier on the eye and alot easy to understand.”
Totally opposite for me. I feel like I can scan HTML emails much faster than text emails. The proper use of font size, weight, color, etc. all help to make the information easier to digest (not just prettier to look at).
As with everything though, it’s all in the execution.
Comment by hilarie.j — August 5, 2006 @ 4:30 am
Would you guys consider posting the code for the email newsletter? Have you tested it across different email clients, Mac & PC? Designing email newsletters is trickier than designing for the web because almost all clients display CSS differently (if at all) and many clients default to images off now.
I’d love to see how you guys coded your email. I guess I could just wait to get it, though. :)
Comment by Brandon — August 6, 2006 @ 2:56 pm
“And what’s the argument against HTML emails really?”
The lack of standard. Ability to abuse.
“Are these people who want text-only emails also using text-only browsers? Do they live mundane, text-only lives?”
No we don’t. I *personally* prefer text only emails, I’ve set my mail client (now Thunderbird, previously Outlook Express) to only display text version of emails - I don’t like getting HTML emails.
“don’t you think that you lose the branding aspect with text only e-mails. I think that’s quite important”
Yes, you do lose it, but to what extent is the question - I personally agree with Paul’s comment “The fact that it comes from ‘Company X’ is branding enough for me”. Important, maybe, but not as important as my preference to read text only.
“Although whatever you send out should be in the standard ‘text with html version attached’ format that lets people get the crap version in lynx”
It works fine for me as text only.. it’s been done that way.
Comment by David Stone — August 6, 2006 @ 5:55 pm
I agree heartily with David Stone. I’m no power email user who frowns on HTML mails as they waste valuable time in my hectic work schedule but I’ve disabled HTML in Entourage because I often just don’t like the way that people and businesses personalise their own messages and have got that spam paranoia going on too.
It’s slightly odd to me that a business that specialises in the professional enhancement of this method of communication would blanket assume that people embrace HTML mails. Why not adopt a similar attitude as Campaign Monitor and sniff out the clients Mail app to see whether they’ve got HTML activated (or whatever magic it is that they do) so that a plain text mail is delivered if it’s disabled.
I’d think more of your service and brand if I wasn’t sent HTML messages with the guts showing…
ps. Campaign Monitor doesn’t actually do the sniffing successfully for Entourage but I know that that at least they are trying.
Comment by Adam Kemeny — August 18, 2006 @ 1:54 am
First and foremost I would recommend letting people opt for which type they want. These days I would say that HTML can be the default, but let the user choose.
People have made all the standard points about the pros and cons of each, and I won’t repeat them. The lack of uniformity between eMail clients (so much worse than differences across web browsers) does make this a tough area.
However, one “pro” for HTML that no one has mentioned yet is the “M” aspect: markup. You can define the relationship of elements on the page in a semantic way, specifying headings etc. For short messages this isn’t usually important, but for a larger eMail this can really help people to understand the structure of the content.
Comment by Christian Eaton — August 25, 2006 @ 10:50 am