I’ve noticed an annoying phenomenon as of late regarding e-mail newsletters. I, like I assume many, view most of these newsletters on my phone. These HTML newsletters often contain links to feature articles on a website.
Mobile Page not found image from SPIN magazine
Lately, I’ve noticed a disturbing web presence trend for these newsletters to automatically force me to a mobile friendly site[I'm calling you out SPIN magazine]. This isn’t a problem if you bring me to the actual site. The problem I’ve noticed recently is that often the url forces me to an m.yoursite.com and then I get a page not found page because an equivalent mobile friendly version of the article doesn’t exist. While in this case there is a view the page on our full website link, it doesn’t always work on first click. If you’re not going to develop either a responsive site altogether or provide equivalent content (especially feature articles) then don’t bother forcing me to your mobile site. This is a quick way to lose me as a customer / reader.
This also is a highlight of the importance of not just mobilizing or making responsive your homepage(which is another trend lately) but making sure that your underlying content pages are responsive or mobile friendly. I’d argue that it’s possibly more important from an effective marketing standpoint to make news, events, stories/ call to action pages mobile/responsive than it is to make your homepage responsive due to the other channels(e-mail newsletters, social media, and online ads] you’ll be energizing through this effort. Creating a unified user experience via mobile should be the goal rather than just getting your top/home pages responsive.
Reblogged this on tbdfaq.