Shopify Email Design Tips

[Trevor]

When someone opens your email, you want them to know it was from you—and be crystal clear on what they should do next, whether that’s visit your store or add that hot new product to their cart. Shopify Email gives you design flexibility without needing to touch a line of code, leaving your emails looking great on desktop and mobile.

Here are some pro tips from Shopify Email’s lead designer, Laura Forbes, that you might want to consider to make your emails stand out. Laura spends her days thinking about great email design while building these tools, so she knows her stuff.

• Edit your product titles and descriptions, right in the email. When you add products to an email, Shopify pulls in the information directly from your product listing to save you time—but that might be too much detail for your chosen layout. You can hide the product description, title, and price, or edit down a too-long title to line up nicely in a grid.

• Grab free images, directly in the editor. Shopify Email integrates with Burst, Shopify’s free stock image library, so you can add stock photos directly to your emails with a single click.

• Use the image and text block to structure your layout. Whether you want to display products in a new way, share different value props for a single product, or highlight multiple promotions, consider alternating images and text to keep things interesting. You can use this section to highlight your store’s hours, introduce yourself to your subscribers, and sign-off with an image of your signature at the end of an email.

• Use a background color and spacers to add white space. Sometimes it’s as much about what you don’t include as what you do. If you use a background color in your emails, try adding spacers using the same color between sections to create sections in your email. 

• Try hiding the header to switch up your designs. If you want to lead with an image instead of your standard header, you have the ability to hide the header that comes standard with your store’s name or logo featured. If you’re going to hide the header, it’s even more important to keep the rest of your branding consistent, so make sure the fonts, colors, and style of your email isn’t too different than your usual!

There’s plenty more you can do to create emails that get results in Shopify Email. Why not try using the multi-column layout to highlight your recent blog posts, create side-by-side CTAs, or even just do a two-column text layout? You can also include an express checkout section to add urgency for a hot new product, and send your subscribers right to the checkout page.

Learn more through the Shopify Help Centre.