April 5, 2012

Email Inspiration: Waitrose Animated Call to Action

This fun Easter campaign from UK supermarket Waitrose uses animation to draw attention to the call to action – a cute easter chick comes over and pecks the CTA button.

Here’s the animation:

The rest of the design features a strong hierarchy, and whilst there is a lot of content, it’s easy to scan and read the content.

  • http://twitter.com/shaneoleary1 Shane O Leary

    Hey guys, nice post! Could you explain how this is done? Gif is it? Would it show up in Gmail for example?

  • http://www.elliot-ross.co.uk/ Elliot Ross

    hey – animated gifs are easy enough to do in Photoshop, and they work pretty much everywhere, except in Outlook 2007/10. Outlook displays the first frame, so if there’s any important content in the animation then you should make sure it’s included in the first frame.

    • http://twitter.com/shaneoleary1 Shane O Leary

      Cheers!
      Is there any reason why it’s not done by more brands then?

  • David R.

    I have to disagree with the use of animated gifs. This ploy for attention draws you away from the other, more important content on the email. And with the CTA already large and a vibrant color there is no reason to add an animation. The reason others don’t use gifs as much is because they are cute at first, but then they become cumbersome to ignore if you want to read the email and finally annoying because they loop over and over and over. 

    • http://www.elliot-ross.co.uk/ Elliot Ross

      Hey David

      I think you’ve got a point there, it’s all about using them subtly and with restraint – the last thing you want to do is make them overbearing so people get distracted from the business of buying something! Sadly those animations are in the minority, but I don’t think the Waitrose one is too bad..