Today I received an email from a friend, it had a beautifully designed email signature that showed all the usual details. It contained first name, last name, job title, cell number, landline, email address, web address and a logo. I thought wow that looks great, how am I going to tell them it sucks! They had obviously spent a lot of time and effort getting it just so, but there was a massive problem.
Email signatures are consumable information
So what’s the problem I hear you ask. Well in this case the email signature was a massive image, it looked damn good, I’ll give you that it was very professional looking.
But here’s the thing that email signature is supposed to be helpful information I can consume. What do you mean consume? I mean I want to choose how I am going to use, digest or interact with this information. In this case I wanted to add them to my database so I had their records on hand should I wish to get in contact.
So what’s the problem? The first problem is I cannot cut and paste the information from the signature to my database platform. The second problem is that none of that information is available to click on when I view that email on my smart phone.
Make the info available with text
When viewing that signature on a smart phone using an image has rendered it useless. If it was text based the smart phone would work it’s magic. Firstly the phone number becomes a clickable link that when triggered would make the phone ring that number, the location address would do the same but trigger Google maps or similar showing the map location. The same goes for any other information the phone is able to detect such as an email address or website links.
Email programs are dumb
The sad fact is that email signatures are a delicate balance between looking pretty and being usable. You need text to make the information usable but graphics look better. The other problem is that email is really dumb, well rather the programs such as outlook, mac mail and Thunderbird that render signature do not handle trying to make the fonts or text very fancy. This really ruins any chance of being able to be very fancy with the look of the signature. You are limited to basic fonts and layouts.
Email signature summary
- The information is the most important thing
- Get over yourself and make the info available
- Test your signature is usable in most devices
- Test all your links
