Hello skinny – how wide should your eMail be? by Dylan Boyd @dtboyd

Just how wide should and email be? I know that everyone builds them a little different when it comes to girth, but I have not seen many under 300 px wide. This one in point is 265 px wide. So skinny I thought for a moment that maybe I had a rendering issue. But alas I scrolled down and found the rest.

Now I see lot of European email marketers roll it thin, but in my opinion they are running it way too narrow for the US. Now Icebreaker is a NZ based company with new North America HDQs in PDX and I might need to walk up there soon and give them an hour on changing the approach to the US audience.

Why? Well take a look, they left so much on the table. Typically we see emails between 500 and 610 px wide in design. Over twice the width of this email. If they would have only looked to stretch the body out they would not have driven the actual product of this ecom email so far down, well below the fold.

The header image was engaging but there was nothing to do with it. Once you got to the actual product it was a 4 by grid and little copy and no actional buttons in site. Time to get the button genie out and create some Homer Simson-esque button pushing desires in the US audience.

Now I love Icebreaker as a whole, amazing clothing and the site (if you have not seen it) does something I wanted to do for a Natural Foods company some time back… they source trace back every garment sold to the exact farm that it was sourced from. Amazing.

So skinny — > Good or bad? You know my take. What about your take? Post your comments!