Email and website navigation merit different design tactics

Though many online marketers send emails that are very similar to their websites in terms of navigation and linking, major differences in the way consumers view emails vs. websites indicate that emails should be designed differently to achieve the best results, according to a recent report from Smith-Harmon.

The report, which is based on an analysis of website and email data for 100 top retailers collected in March and April 2009 by the Retail Email Blog, found that horizontal navigation bars, emails with fewer links, HTML coding (vs. images) and special tactics to highlight sales, seasonal specials and featured departments work best in emails.

Key highlights from the study:

* Horizonal navigation bars more visible: The study found that horizontal navigation bars are much more common in emails than vertical ones, which are used by fewer than 5% of retailers. This is because horizontal navigation bars are more likely to be seen in their entirety because of preview panes.

* Fewer links work better: Differences between email and website navigation and the length of time consumers view email generally mean fewer links should be included in email navigation than in website navigation. Rather than loading up a navigation bar with too many links, it is more effective to pick the top five or six best-performing site destinations and include those.

* HTML preferred for nav bars: It is better to use HTML so the links are be readable by the growing number of viewers who block images in emails by default. Currently 28% of horizontal email navigation bars use HTML text, up from just 15% last year.

* Other navigation links helpful: Using navigation links to help email viewers find other parts of a retail site and locate items of interest quickly - such as sales, stores, featured departments and seasonal merchandise is often an effective tactic.

See the report.

Internal marketing of e-mail company guidelines

Do not communicate and promote e-mail company guidelines (e-Standards) only through e-mails, or as a labor formality.

Use all communication channels available inside the company to sensitize and reinforce employee's commitment on this issue.

Don’t expect them to learn how to use better e-mail only with the manual of norms and procedures.

Employees need ample and detailed training on its risks, their rights, responsibilities, and the consequences of the improper use of this communication tool.

They need to know as well how much is the impact of some witten messages. Discussions or "clarifications" among teamwork could take many more time (and costs) than a phone call or a face-to-face meeting.

Don’t expect a single individual or department to be responsible of overseeing compliance to corporate policies on the use of e-mail. This is not strategical.

All managers and supervisors must provide support to monitor and model employee’s behaviors because otherwise good practices will not be adopted in a good will manner.

Remember, some bosses usually are the main rule-breakers, and their inconsistency doesn’t make it easy for employees to adopt e-Standards.

Bosses and others supervisors levels have to be first accomplish e-mail company guidelines. They are responsible for setting good examples.

Confronting the information overload

The average email user received more than 160 emails a day in 2008, according to figures from market research firm the Radicati Group.

A study by the University of California at Irvine tracked 36 office workers and found that employees spent just 11 minutes on a project before an email notification, phone ring or knock on the door interrupted them.

One tool to deal with information overload is a new plug-in for Microsoft’s email program Outlook 2007, called Email Prioritizer.

It lets you choose not have any email delivered to your inbox for a specified period of time or until your current meeting ends and lets you rank the importance of incoming email messages with zero to three stars.

Other products include Google’s Email Addict service; Xerox’s Hybrid Catgorizer that automatically scans, sorts, extracts and reviews electronic documents; and website monitoring technology such as WebSite Watcher and Copernic Tracker.

Read the complete article by Mark Frary for TimesOnline.com.

The good, the bad, and the ugly about email managment

AIIM’s research…

The survey was taken by 1,109 individual members of the AIIM community between March 23rd and April 3rd, 2009, using a Web-based tool. Invitations to take the survey were sent via e-mail to the AIIM community of 65,000.

On average, our respondents spend more than an hour and a half per day processing their emails, with one in five spending three or more hours of their day.

Over half have hand-held access by phones, Blackberries and PDAs. Two thirds process work-related emails outside office hours with 28 percent confessing to doing so “after work, on weekends and during vacations”.

“Sheer overload” is reported as the biggest problem with email as a business tool, followed closely by “Finding and recovering past emails” and “Keeping track of actions”.

Email archiving, legal discovery, findability and storage volumes are the biggest current concerns within organizations, with security and spam now considered less of a concern by respondents.

Over half of respondents are “not confident” or only “slightly confident” that emails related to documenting commitments and obligations made by staff are recorded, complete and retrievable.

Only 10 percent of organizations have completed an enterprise-wide email management initiative, with 20 percent currently rolling out a project. Even in larger organizations, 17 percent have no plans to, although the remaining 29 percent are planning to start sometime in the next 2 years.

Some 45 percent of organizations (including the largest ones) do not have a policy on Outlook “Archive settings,” so most users will likely create .pst archive files on local drives.

Only 19 percent of those surveyed capture important emails to a dedicated email management system or to a general purpose ECM system. 18 percent print emails and file as paper, and a worrying 45 percent file in nonshared personal Outlook folders.

A third of organizations have no policy to deal with legal discovery, 40 percent would likely have to search back-up tapes, and 23 percent feel they would have gaps from deleted emails. Only 16 percent have retention policies that would justify deleted emails.

Download the entire, 17-page report, containing 21 graphs and charts.

Why do companies need e-mail use guidelines?

At the workplace e-mail is a resource that belongs to the company. But sometimes people forget that because of labor rutines, work overwhelming, or because individual professional effort is so personal.

e-Standards could helps people have a better idea of the formality of using e-mail in the workplace, as documents that have direct legal implications for the company and for each employee.

In other words, companies needs more employees with more awareness of the consequences messages can have and a better effort to use the good practices of written communication.

To achieve this goals, companies must permanently and didactically show to each employe best practices using e-mail, and what behavior is expected from he or she, as a senders or receivers of digital messages.

Most people assume writing e-mail as something "natural", and take for granted that if you can write (if you know write) you can communicate efficiently by e-mail.

But with no doubt is harder to communicate by written than face-to-face. Written messages don't have the communicational advantages of body language, facial expression or tone of voice, which are part of a regular face-to-face communication.

If people at workplace suppose that they execute their responsability by sending e-mails, they wouldn't take in consideration the negative potential impact of certain written messages. So, they wouldn't care e-mail is not the propper means for team work in many cases.

That is why e-mail companies guidelines can help employees a lot. I offer you many ideas and electronic mail good practices in my book.