Google+ has grown on me, especially in the last year. I use it more and more, especially for great communities like Local Search, Technical SEO and Google Analytics.
One of the biggest drivers for me of knowing what content is being shared on Google+ is the email alerts they send out. But there is one big problem, they are practically unreadable on my iPhone.
Is A Responsive Designed Email That Hard Google?
I’d guess I consume my email via mobile 65% of the time versus the desktop at 30% and my iPad at 5%. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb that this same email breakdown is likely true for a solid number of people that actively use G+.
Here is one of my dozen or so emails from Google+ in both the iPhone mail app (left) and Gmail app (right). Can you read the content? Me either.
I find it frustrating that this usability hole exists for Google, especially with a product/platform they are pouring just about every ounce of energy into finding success. Many of you might not be surprised at all by this.
Responsive Email Is A Must, Even For Pizza
The numbers tell it all, mobile email engagement is here to stay. A recent Litmus report stated that 48% of email is read via mobile, while just 33% for the desktop. That same report outlined that 68% of Gmail and Yahoo mail users opened their email on their mobile or tablet device.
Domino’s pizza gets it with their example above. They and many other companies that understand the shift to mobile for email consumption are creating and delivering mobile friendly emails with responsive design. The above example and 9 others are part of an eConsultancy recent post on responsive email designs.
In our email marketing services at Spyder Trap, we’ve found B2B to be even higher for mobile engagement than B2C. For the last year now, we’ve put a strong recommendation on anyone’s email designs to be responsive. The nice thing is our platform we use for email reports on email client type so we can easily justify the growth or size of their mobile audience.
Now if Google would only look at theirs and get somebody to fix it. If you’d like to interact with me on Google+ please do, you’ll also add more unreadable email alerts to my inbox. 🙂