Ecommerce email design

Email layout design is the design side of your email marketing. We make modular templates that look like your store, hold up in dark mode, meet accessibility basics and are tested across email apps. It suits stores whose emails look inconsistent or break in some inboxes. We do not promise that it will lift sales.

This page is part of ad creative.

Who it’s for, and when it isn’t

It suits stores that send email regularly and find each one takes too long to assemble, looks different from the website or goes wrong in certain inboxes.

It is not the right fit if you have not decided what to send, or to whom. In that case start with email campaigns or email automation. It is also not for anyone who wants a single picture of an email with no thought for how it is built and reused.

What’s included

• A set of modular blocks, such as header, hero, product grid, offer and footer
• Layouts for the email types you send, such as campaigns, welcome and abandoned basket
• Light and dark mode behaviour, including logo and image treatment
• Accessibility checks
• Testing across the email apps your customers use
• A short guide to using and changing the blocks

We ask for your brand guidelines, light and dark logo files, product images and examples of your current emails. You get back the designs in Figma, the built templates in your email platform and a short guide.

Design only, or design and build?

Both. We design the templates, then build and load them into your email platform, such as Klaviyo, and test them across the email apps your customers use. If you have your own developer, we can hand over the designs and code instead.

How we do it

We look at the emails you send now and how they appear in the apps your customers use. Then we design a small set of blocks that combine into different emails, so each send is assembled rather than redrawn. We test, fix and hand over, with a guide.

Keeping the blocks few matters. Fifteen block types means fifteen things to test and maintain, and a team that gives up and goes back to one-off emails.

Dark-mode rendering

Many people read email in dark mode, and email apps handle it in different ways. Some leave your colours alone, some lighten dark backgrounds and darken light ones, and some do a mix. You cannot control which, so we design to survive all of them.

• Text and backgrounds. We pick colours that stay readable if an app swaps them.
• Logos. A dark logo on a transparent background can vanish on a dark one. We prepare a version that works on both, or one with a safe outline. Your brand guidelines should say which logo goes where.
• Images with flat backgrounds. A white box around a product looks wrong on a dark background. We use transparent backgrounds where we can.
• Testing. We check the results rather than assume them.

Email apps handle dark mode in one of three ways: some change nothing, some darken light backgrounds only, and some invert every colour. Each needs a different safeguard, which is why we test rather than assume.

Accessibility

An email people cannot read is a wasted send. We check:

• Real text, not text in images. Many apps block images by default, and screen readers cannot read a picture of words.
• Contrast. Text is easy to read against its background, in light and dark.
• Text size and spacing. Body text large enough for a phone, with room to breathe.
• Links and buttons. Descriptive link text, not “click here”, and buttons big enough to tap.
• Structure. A sensible reading order, with headings used for headings.
• Image alternatives. Meaningful alt text on images that carry information, and empty alt text on decoration.
• A plain-text version. For people and apps that need one.

We work to WCAG 2.2 AA wherever it applies to email: contrast, readable text, structure and alt text. Email apps support less than web browsers, so some of this is checked by testing in the apps themselves.

How design and email marketing work together

Design and sending are two halves of the same job. Email campaigns decide what to send, to whom and when, and how to read the results. Email automation sets up the welcome, abandoned basket and post-purchase emails that run on their own. Email layout design makes sure each of them looks like your brand and works in the inbox.

A strong template in front of the wrong audience will not help, and a good segment sent in a broken layout wastes the work. We plan both together and judge results against your store’s own sales records. The wider picture is in email marketing.

What it costs

Email layout design is usually priced as a set of templates, with changes quoted separately. See the pricing page.

One-off email design is priced at an agreed hourly rate. If we run your email marketing on a retainer, templates (for example in Klaviyo) are usually part of it. We can design, build and load them. See the pricing page.

What we measure

We check that each block renders correctly in the apps we test, that contrast and structure pass our checks, and that the templates are quick to use. After launch we look at how emails are read, and compare that with your store’s sales. We say what we think it means and what we cannot tell. Open rates in particular can be unreliable, so we do not lean on them. Apple Mail, for example, can load emails in the background for privacy, which records opens that never happened.

We do not promise results.

Not sure where to start?

A creative review covers your emails as well as your ads. It will tell you what is working, what is not and what to fix first.