Mobile optimisation for email: build for the phone first
Plenty of your customers read email on a phone, one-handed, between other things. Mobile optimisation means building for that reader first, then checking on a real handset.
- 084Mobile Optimisation
- Designing emails to render properly on mobile devices, crucial due to the high percentage of emails opened on smartphones.
- Layout
- One column, so nothing has to shrink to fit
- Buttons
- Big enough for a thumb, with space around them
- Test on
- A real iPhone and an Android phone, in light and dark mode
- Ends at
- A product page that works on the same phone
What a phone does to an email designed on a big monitor
Emails tend to get built and signed off on a laptop. Then they're read somewhere much smaller, and the phone makes its own decisions.
- A two-column product grid shrinks until the prices are unreadable
- Words baked into an image turn to a smudge, and vanish when images don't load
- Two text links side by side become one fat-thumbed mistake
- The subject line and preview text get cut off sooner than on desktop
Build the email for one thumb first
Use a single column. Keep the words as live text, big enough to read without pinching, and put the main button near the top so nobody scrolls to find what you want them to do. Make it a proper button, wide enough for a thumb.
Keep images light, because a heavy email crawls on mobile data, and give each one alt text so the email still makes sense with images off. Then make the first few words of the preview carry the point. On a phone that might be all anyone sees, which is why preview text length deserves ten minutes of your time.
Dark mode, and the logo that disappears
Plenty of phones run in dark mode, and many email apps recolour your email to match, each in its own way. A black logo on a transparent background can vanish into the dark. Dark text baked into an image stays dark.
Give the logo a light outline or its own solid background, and check every template in dark mode before it goes live. It takes a few minutes, and it stops a launch email going out without your name on it.
The product page is the other half of a mobile email
The tap lands on your site, on the same phone, quite possibly on mobile data. If the page is slow, the price sits below a tall gallery or a pop-up covers it, the email gets blamed for the page's fault.
Responsive design is the site's side of the same job. Fixing the page is conversion work, and no amount of email design makes up for skipping it.
Related terms
FAQs
How do I check what my emails look like on a phone?
Klaviyo's preview has a mobile view, and it's a decent first look, but it's a simulation. Send a test to yourself and open it on an iPhone in Apple Mail and on an Android phone in the Gmail app, in light and dark mode, with images on and off. Then tap every button.
Should emails be shorter for people reading on a phone?
Not shorter by rule. Front-loaded. The point and the main button belong in the first screen, and everything after that is for people who want more. A long email reads fine on a phone if it scrolls in one column and earns the scroll. What fails is long and dense, with the point buried halfway down.
Is mobile optimisation the same thing as responsive design?
Not quite. Responsive design is a technique, a layout that rearranges itself to fit the screen. Some email apps don't fully support the code it relies on, so the safest email reads well on a phone even when that code is ignored. Mobile optimisation is the wider job: subject lines, buttons, images, dark mode and the page the tap lands on.
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