Open this mail on mobile for better experience

The screenshot is from a promotional email that I had received from Flipkart, one of the e-commerce giants in India and a 15 billion dollar company.

I opened the email in Outlook 2010 using my Windows 7 PC and I wondered if I had committed a sin by opening it in a desktop.

So I opened it in the GMail Android app and I felt it to be OK and I haven’t got any better experience than that of the desktop version. Maybe the mail itself was plain jane.

March to Mobile

Months ago the Flipkart owned Myntra has moved to a mobile app only model and stopped all the sales through its site which received brickbats from the Indian online community. And some geeks even build another site called Myntrality to counter this mobile app only business model(the site was later taken down due to a legal notice).

This email may also be part of their upcoming mobile app only strategy.

But there are some strict no-nos when playing with your audience, they are…

1. Don’t force your users

Don’t force the customer to open the email in any specific device whether its a mobile, tablet, laptop or a desktop PC. Leave the freedom to the user to open the email in any device anytime.

2. Don’t force your heuristics on the users

Research shows that we often allow prior experience or outcomes to guide our approach to a decision, even though that approach may not be the best way to go.

The business has got the moral obligation to provide the best possible experience to the end user rather than coerce them.

What to do instead?

If you are doing split testing with your content/design, make the changes invisible or in other words conceal it from your users because good UX is invisible.

And finally, Don’t piss off your customer(s) in any stage.

P.S: They even want the users to unsubscribe the mail at the first glance, so they put an unsubscribe link in the first line itself 🙂