E-mail signatures are bad UX

Recognize this?

E-mail signatures. Meh.

Right! It’s your company’s e-mail signature! And it sucks. Not because of the disclaimer. Not because of the environmental note. No, it sucks because of the predefined “Kind regards”.

Why signatures?

Signatures are meant to give your recipient an overview of who you are, what your role is at the company you work for and what different ways there are to contact you. These often include full address information, phone and fax numbers and even your e-mail address – which doesn’t make sense given that you’re actually mailing the other person.

Chances are that your company also has the disclaimer in place, outnumbering your actual mail’s word count. And they added that sweet environmental statement a year ago, right? Well, all of them ought to go – but that’s not what makes it bad UX. It’s the non-personal closing that makes it robotic.

Automated complimentary closings

The netiquette in terms of valediction depends on the country or region that you live in. This is how the Dutch go about it:

• Mvg (an abbreviation of “Met vriendelijke groeten”, meaning “With kind regards”. Very formal)
• Groeten (meaning “Greetings”, formal)
• Groet (a single “Greeting”, formal)
• Groetjes (These are actually “small greetings”, and widely used as a casual way of closing a mail)

Leaving out such closings in Dutch correspondence is regarded as impolite. Putting them in doesn’t actually do anything other than following netiquette standards. I had a talk with Frank Raterink – Dutch rising star on social life the analogue and digital way – on e-mail closings and netiquette, and here’s what he said:

People shouldn’t use automated complimentary closings. Instead, make it personal and from the heart.

Frank is right. It makes you as the sender think about the other person for a second. Closing words should be truly complimentary and personal. The recipient will recognize this, causing that unique and warm moment of feeling good and smiling. It’s exactly that moment that user experience design is all about; making users experience something excellent.

Making e-mails personal and friendly matters. We’re glad that our own attempts got noticed (Thanks Amy!).

Now go and retweet this with a personalized message to your followers!