How to design an email ?
Hi readers, a new day with a new article to read. Today you will learn about how email design has changed the perspective of the users and how it can change the whole internet ecosystem. For this case study, I have used Gmail as my reference, so let’s get started.
What is email & how it got in popularity over time ?
- Email is a communication tool that was developed around 1950s. It was mostly used by military, government officials, universities and big corporations.
- In 1989, CompuServe launched its first email service. Users could connect to the Internet and share messages with other email users.
- It’s 2022 and the time I am writing this article 3,149,447 emails are being send per second.
It has been a very long time that email had become a part of our life. From logging into any new website to share documents, creating a calendar, everything became a part of email. The service which was started just as a communication service has now become a part of microsite. Businesses have started investing insane amount of money to create a good user-friendly email designs which makes their user attract towards their product.
Let’s compare a 2004 vs 2022 email and find out some differences.
In terms of UI, there is a vast change on how the email used to look, a long way back to what I look now. But if you observe the UI carefully, you will find certain patterns that have been followed to create this email template. Let’s understand the above example. The above screenshot is an email of a product that I bought online, and it shows me the contents related to the same. So, I as an individual is getting this mail, then I will have some sort of context in my subconscious mind of what I need to look in the mail.
The list of things I might want to look into is
- if my order is successful or not
- when will it get delivered
- is my address, name and contact details all are perfect
- how much I have paid
- what are the products I ordered
- is it paid or COD. If paid, can I initiate a refund
- is there a way I can visit the website and report it and much more…
So designing a mail template is one thing and deciding what contents to be shown which can make users life easy is another. This breakup, what I made to make you understand, is the UX part of designing.
Till now, you all learned about both UI design and how UX works. Now, have a look at some universal guidelines that are used for designing email template. Some of the guidelines which I have mentioned below are universal and some are based on my research.
- Remember, the standard width for emails is 550px — 600px
- Design for the smallest device size: 320px with a standard email width of 550–600px.
- CTA text shouldn’t have longer text.
- Footer section has a fixed design.
- Mail that replicates the website makes the user trust more.
- The image should be less than 1 MB, as email shouldn’t take much time to load.
- Image should have alt text for visual impaired users.
- Email should be clean and to the point of what the title depicts.
- User scans the mail so minimum the text more clarity and visibility to the user.
- Hyperlinks should only be used where the user needs to go through the content of the email thoroughly, read it, and then click on the link.
Now as the world is moving forward to Web 3.0 where everything will be decentralized, the things are moving to a virtual world from a 1440 px screen, its important to understand that the way we are now looking at the mail will change definitely.
What do you think will be the future of email, and how will the designers contribute towards this change ? Let me know in the comment section.
THANKS FOR READING…
