In my continuing series of posts about unsubscribing from mailing lists, I highlight best practices by organizations.
I’ve always thought unsubscribing from mailing lists should be quick and easy to do.
Which is why I’m giving a UX win to Consumer Reports and how they’ve designed a process with the user in mind, making the unsubscription process easy to understand and complete.
How Organizations Make it Hard to Unsubscribe From Mailing Lists
Your email address is crucial to organizations promoting their services and products who hope to convert a mailing list subscriber to a paying customer.
When someone wants to unsubscribe, organizations often make it harder by using
- Confusing language
- Convoluted steps
- Multiple confirmation pages
in their attempt to keep you subscribed to their mailing list.
Which is why I highlight organizations with an easy-to-use unsubscription process.
I’ve said it earlier in this post, and I’ll say it again.
It shouldn’t be hard to unsubscribe from a mailing list.
Consumer Reports Unsubscription Process
When I recently took a Consumer Reports online survey, I was automatically subscribed to their mailing list.
A common strategy, one I don’t agree with, and I usually immediately unsubscribe.
This time I forgot.
I didn’t think about it until I received a promotional email message this week from Consumer Reports.
Thankfully, Consumer Reports made it easy for me to unsubscribe, providing an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the message.
I selected the link and was directed to a confirmation page, which provided additional options to stop receiving other promotional emails from Consumer Reports.
As well as an option to resubscribe.
The whole process to unsubscribe and confirm I wasn’t subscribed to any other Consumer Reports mailing list took less than a minute for me to complete.
What I Liked About Consumer Report’s Unsubscription Process
Through their design and language, I could tell the Consumer Reports design team cared about the user experience:
- The unsubscribe link was where I expected it, at the bottom of the email message
- Consumer Reports confirmed I would no longer receive promotional emails from their Consumer Reports Member Communications
- An option was provided to stop receiving other promotional emails from Consumer Reports (I had no reason to think I was subscribed to other emails, but confirmed I wasn’t subscribed)
- Consumer Reports confirmed I would receive important information about my account and newsletters I opted to receive
- The confirmation page provided option to re-subscribe to promotional emails from Member Communications.
In addition:
- Good line height
- Easy-to-read font
- Large font size
- Short paragraphs
- Plain language
made it easy for me to read and understand my options.
Consumer Reports went the extra step to provide the option to stop receiving any other promotional emails.
Well done, Consumer Reports!
One Recommended Improvement
I only found one issue I would change in the Consumer Reports process: write descriptive link text for “click here” links on the confirmation page.
I might reword that sentence to “If you would like to, you can stop receiving other promotional emails from Consumer Reports,” with the link text of “stop receiving other promotional emails.”
By writing descriptive link text, the text will make sense when read in isolation.
In addition, screen readers users (who navigate a page by a list of links) will be provided meaningful content, rather than multiple “click here” links.
Wrapping Up
Unsubscribing from Consumer Reports mailing list was straightforward.
Their process was fast for me to complete with easy-to-understand wording.
It was clear to me their design team took time to understand the process and craft wording that was easy to read and understand.
Thank you, Consumer Reports!
Do you have any similar stories about unsubscribing from email lists? Share them in the comments.
For the “click here” links, what do you usually use?
I have a couple of clients whose target audience is not generally “computer literate” and unless they are told to “click here” they have told my client they didn’t see any place they were supposed to click to get the rest of the information.
Right now I am working with a similar client and just one paragraph of their “About Us” section is on the home page with the complete information on the About Us page. Right now, the final line is, “To read more about us, click here.”
Is there something you recommend instead of that wording?
Hi Paul,
Thank you for your comment. I do my best to craft text in the sentence or call to action to be more descriptive, writing text that makes sense out of context.
For the paragraph of their “About Us” section on the home page, one option would be “Learn more about us,” with all four words linked.
I’m curious, what styling is used on your “click here” linked text? Is it a blue underline under the text, or something else?
Usually, it is bold and underlined. To me, it is obviously a link, but my wife is always reminding me that what I think is obvious and natural may not be that obvious and natural to someone who isn’t online more than a time or two a week.
Thank you for the idea!
Your wife is absolutely right. And since we spend so much time online, I think we get used to looking at designs differently than someone who doesn’t get online as frequently. One more question: is the text link in a blue color? People associate text that is underlined and blue as a link and recognize it as something they can select.