Verification email: a small trick to improve UX

The problem

When signing up, most apps make email verification mandatory (except when the user signs up with an OAuth provider such as Google).

And we all agree: this step is necessary. But it remains a small moment of friction. The user has to make a slight effort: open their inbox, look for the verification email, then click the link.

The solution

A tiny detail can fix this while keeping the verification step mandatory: show a button that opens the user’s inbox directly. Like this:

Even better, this button can be “magic”: it guesses which provider to open on its own. To get there, just look at the domain at the end of the email address (for example @gmail.com) and match it to its provider.

For Gmail, Yahoo and Proton, a few extra parameters let the link filter the inbox to show only the emails sent by your app. The user lands right on the correct message, with nothing to search for.

The table of cases

For each provider (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Proton, iCloud), I gathered the domains to detect, the link to use on desktop and the opening link on mobile. It’s yours as a free download.

What if the domain isn’t recognized?

For example @mycompany.com. It means the user has a work address, which can run on different mail clients.

In most cases, it’s hosted on Google Workspace or read with Outlook. So show the two most used providers by default:

Open Gmail Open Outlook

And there you go: you’ve just earned a point by making your user’s experience smoother from their very first contact.