I made a major goof when looking for the ideal email width. I went from 42-characters wide up to 54 characters and now I’m back all the way down to 37 characters!.
Why the switch?
I finally tested my emails on my cell phone!
Always be testing!
I use AWeber to send marketing emails. It’s mobile preview cuts thing off at just 33 characters and says you’d need to scroll horizontally to read the rest of the line.
That is way too strict, I learned.
On my Android cell phone, I read one of my 54-character-wide emails. It automatically enforces a 37-character width and forces the text down to the next line.
Unfortunately, it would show the rest of the line and then jump to the next line. This often caused lines with just 1-17 characters that would then go to another full line.
Normal 54-character width doesn’t get cutoff on desktop or other email:
This is what that would look like. You would have the following text flow. But then, it would cut out and show up on the next line.
On Gmail text forced down after 34-characters with empty space:
This is what that would look like. You would
have the following text
flow. But then, it would cut out and show up on
the next line.
Reading the email on Microsoft Outlook on my cell phone did something similar to Gmail. At 39-characters, it forces the text down to the next line. But it looks normal without awkward empty space.
When I read the email in the Yahoo! Mail App on my cell phone, it shows the full 54 characters per line. The only problem here is that the text is really small and hard to read.
This is the case for all my email on Yahoo Mail App but is less bad when I set it to 37-characters wide. You just have to zoom in on Yahoo email text to read it better.