Email design and layout

People look at an email for a few seconds, mostly on a phone. So design has one job: make the point and the next step obvious to someone who looks for three seconds, and reward the person who stays.

The short version

• One column, 600 pixels wide, designed for the phone first.
• The first phone screen carries your logo, the headline, the reason to care and the main button.
• Headline in real text, never baked into a picture.
• A clear order: blur the email, and the headline, the picture and the button should still stand out, in that order.
• Build from a small set of blocks: header, hero, text, picture and text, products, a quote, an offer, a button, a footer.
• Body text 16 pixels or more, small print 13 or more, lines of 50 to 75 characters.
• One accent colour for everything that can be pressed.
• Every email looks like it comes from you: the same logo, colours, type and footer every time.
• Stay under Gmail's 102 KB clip, or the footer, with its unsubscribe link, is hidden.

How people look at email

• Litmus puts the average time spent reading an email at about 10 seconds.
• In Nielsen Norman Group's eye-tracking study of newsletters, only 19% were read fully, 67% of people never looked at the introduction at all, and readers took in the first two words of headlines.
• On web pages, 57% of viewing time is spent on the first screen and 74% on the first two (Nielsen Norman Group, 2018). The fold still exists in email, lower than it was, so the action belongs near the top.

What an email can and can't do

Structure

A clear order. Make the important things look important, with size, weight, colour, position and space. A bold headline above smaller text. Space between sections so they don't run together.

One column by default. It's the easiest to read, fits every screen, keeps the order clear and works best for people using screen readers. Columns earn their place in newsletters and catalogues. Every row of columns stacks into one column on a phone, in the order you mean it to be read.

The point and the action in the first screen, roughly the first 500 to 600 pixels. Below that, the email can be as long as the job needs.

The inverted pyramid. A headline that states the message, then the picture and the words that make the case, then the button where the eye arrives. One centre line runs through all three.

`` ████████████████████████ headline: the message, widest ██████████████████ a line of support, or the picture ████████████ the short case [ Button ] the eye lands here ``

Headings tell the story on their own. Someone who reads only the subheads should still get the message. "Free delivery ends Sunday", not "Delivery update". Start each with the word that carries the information.

The blocks

A designed email, at phone width:

`` ┌──────────────────────────────┐ │ [logo] │ header, small ├──────────────────────────────┤ │ HEADLINE IN REAL TEXT │ hero: one message │ one line of support │ │ ┌────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ picture │ │ │ └────────────────────────┘ │ │ [ Main button ] │ the first screen ends about here ├──────────────────────────────┤ │ A subhead that tells the │ a block │ story on its own │ │ Two or three short lines. │ │ Link → │ ├──────────────────────────────┤ │ "A short quote." Name │ proof ├──────────────────────────────┤ │ [ Main button ] │ the action again ├──────────────────────────────┤ │ Unsubscribe · Contact us │ footer │ Business name, address │ │ You get this because… │ └──────────────────────────────┘ ``

Designed or letter-style, by the job. A designed email suits offers, products, newsletters and launches. A letter-style email, one column of text, a signature, perhaps one link, suits a founder's note, a sequence step or anything that wants a reply. Both follow the same order.

Type, space and colour

• Lines of 50 to 75 characters. Left-align anything longer than three lines; centre only headlines, short statements and buttons.
• Your brand's font for headlines, with a system font behind it, and expect Gmail and Outlook to show the fallback. Body text in a system font reads the same for everyone.
• Space on a simple scale: 8, 16, 24, 32, 48 pixels. Give every button 30 to 50 pixels of clear space.
• Your brand's colours, and one accent for action, so the eye learns what can be pressed. Text contrast at least 4.5 to 1.
• Pictures support the message; they never carry it alone. No words inside pictures, a description on every one, and an email that still reads with pictures off: Pictures, animation and video.

Look the same every time

The same logo position, colours, type, button style and footer across every email. People recognise the email before they read it, and recognition is part of why the next one gets opened. Change the content, not the frame.

Design the phone first, then let the computer version widen. Never the reverse: Phones, dark mode and accessibility.

Stay under the clip. Don't paste from a word processor (it brings hidden formatting), remove blocks you aren't using, and link to a page for long content: "Read the full story".

Look once before you send: at phone width, at computer width, in dark mode, and with pictures off. That's the whole visual check for a normal campaign.

The footer

The footer carries what the law requires, and the ways out:

• An unsubscribe link, in real text, easy to read, never behind a login, and above the Gmail clip.
• Your business name and postal address, as they really are.
• Why they're getting it: "You're getting this because you joined our list at fernandfig.example." Reminding people how they signed up stops some from pressing "report spam" by mistake.
• How to contact you.

Gmail and Yahoo also require a one-click unsubscribe in the email's hidden headers for marketing mail. That's the sending platform's job, and the visible link is still required. What each country's law asks for: Email marketing and the law.

Doing it here

• Every email is designed for you in your brand, from your brand preset's logo, colours and fonts. Click anything in the preview to change it: How your emails are written.
• Your business address goes in the footer of every email, and the footer's legal lines stay in English whatever language the email is in: One brand, everywhere.
• Every email carries the unsubscribe link and the one-click headers, and an unsubscribe is honoured on every list: Unsubscribes, honoured everywhere.