How To Design Ecommerce Emails That Actually Convert

Why Good-Looking Emails Don’t Always Convert

Most e-commerce emails don’t fail because they look bad. A lot of them actually look really good. But the truth is, you can have nice product shots, clean branding, good colors, but none of those even matter if the prospect still isn’t buying.

The problem I see a lot of brands making is that they design emails as if they’re designing some sort of fancy poster instead of actually trying to communicate with a real person.

In this video, I want to break down how good e-commerce emails are actually designed, what makes people click, and why some of the ugliest emails I’ve seen have made an absurd amount of money.

If you don’t know me, my name is Nick. I’m the founder of Barbs Media, and we work with e-commerce brands on retention strategy, email, and SMS. We mainly help brands turn more first-time buyers into actual repeat customers.

Over the last few years, we’ve helped 50-plus brands dramatically increase email revenue, improve retention, and build systems that make acquiring customers way more profitable long-term.

I want to break down how I actually think about designing e-commerce emails that convert—not just from a visual standpoint, but from a psychological and strategic standpoint, too.

Start With the Goal of the Email

You want to start with the goal of the email. One of the biggest mistakes I see brands make is designing the email before they’ve even figured out what the email is trying to accomplish.

Every email has a completely different context behind it. An abandoned cart email is speaking to somebody differently than a product launch email is, for example. A win-back email carries a significantly different energy than a post-purchase email. Even the pace of the design should change depending on what you’re asking the customer to do.

A lot of brands skip over this and go straight into making the email look good. But good design without direction usually just turns into decoration.

Before anything else, you need clarity on the actual role of the email, because that decision affects everything after it: the layout, the copy, the amount of products you show, the imagery, the CTA, even how much friction you intentionally leave in or remove.

Focus on One Main Call to Action

The most important part of the email is the CTA. One thing I see very often is brands trying to cram way too many CTAs into one email.

Just so we’re on the same page here, CTA simply means call to action. It’s the action you want the customer to take after opening the email. It usually involves clicking the email to view a collection, shopping a product, etc.

The problem is that a lot of brands are trying to push way too many actions all at once. For example, some emails have five different products with three separate offers, including a wall of text, buttons everywhere, and half the time you don’t even know what you’re supposed to look at first.

When everything is fighting for attention, nothing really stands out.

The best-performing emails are usually focused around one singular CTA. You should be able to open the email, and the path should be obvious immediately in terms of what action you want the prospect to take. Your eye should actually move through the email towards one clear action.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have multiple products or collections displayed in the same email, but they should all feel cohesive and complementary to each other.

If the email, for example, is about your summer collection, keep the entire email around that summer collection. If it’s about a specific launch, keep everything connected to that launch.

What you don’t want to do is introduce your spring sale at the top of the email and then halfway through start talking about bundle offers, referral discounts, loyalty points, and three completely unrelated collections.

You only need one main action, and this is going to increase the click rate. When more people click to your page, more people are going to buy.

A lot of good email design just comes down to removing things that don’t really need to be there.

Structure the Email From Top to Bottom

When it comes to the actual structure of the email itself, here’s how we think about it at Barbs Media.

Section number one is the hero section. This is the section that appears above the fold. It’s the part of the email that people see before they even start scrolling. It’s the most important part of the email.

Here, you want a clear headline, strong hero image, and one obvious call to action. Somebody should be able to open the email and immediately understand what the email is about and what action they’re supposed to take.

The second section is the body section. This is the meat and potatoes of the email. This is where you support the call to action with more context, benefits, details, product info, and anything else that really helps move somebody closer towards taking action.

The third section is the product feature section. This is where you feature the actual products tied to the call to action itself.

If the email is about your summer collection, this is a good place to show products from that collection. Or if it’s about a specific launch or promotion, keep the products aligned with that theme.

A mistake I see a lot of brands make is introducing one idea at the top of the email and then completely changing direction halfway through it. The whole email should feel cohesive from top to bottom.

Lastly, the footer section. A lot of brands completely sleep on footers. Your footer is still part of the brand experience, and this is where people go to look for your socials, support info, policies, FAQs, physical store locations if you have them, and really anything else that helps build trust and legitimacy.

A clean footer makes the brand feel more established and intentional overall.

Design for Mobile First

A really important note here: after you have your brand and your email structure all organized and it gets to designing, you want to make sure you design for mobile first.

You have to think about it. Most people are opening your emails while they’re lying in bed, walking around, at work, on the couch, in line for coffee. Not many people are sitting there analyzing your perfectly crafted desktop layout on a giant monitor.

Your email needs to feel effortless to read on mobile. What does that mean? That means big, readable headlines, clear call-to-action buttons, short paragraphs, strong image cropping, simple sections, and clean spacing.

That first screen on mobile matters a lot more than people think. Before somebody even scrolls, they should already understand the vibe of the email, what’s being promoted, and what action they could take.

Use Messaging That Makes the Value Clear

People also massively underestimate how important the messaging is inside of the design itself. Good design cannot save weak messaging.

You can have the cleanest layout in the world, but if the headline is boring, the offer is unclear, or the copy says absolutely nothing, the email is still going to underperform.

Your headline should create curiosity, desire, and instantly communicate value. Your subheader should add clarity and reinforce the benefit. Your call to action should actually match the action you want somebody to take.

Afterwards, your product copy should be specific enough that people immediately understand why the product matters.

The visuals matter as well, but they should support the message instead of trying to carry the entire email themselves.

I see a lot of brands use vague lines like “Your new favorite is here” without actually showing anything compelling enough to support that statement. You can’t expect people to magically connect the dots in two seconds while scrolling through their inbox half asleep.

Clear Communication Is What Converts

At the end of the day, good email design is really just clear communication. The brands that usually perform the best are not necessarily brands making the fanciest emails. They’re usually the brands communicating the clearest.

The customer understands the offer. The products feel cohesive, the email feels intentional, and the next step feels obvious.

Honestly, when you start looking at email design through that lens, you stop trying to make emails that look impressive and start making ones that actually convert.

Get Help and Apply This to Abandoned Cart Emails

But again, it’s one thing to understand how e-commerce design works, and it’s another to actually build this yourself. That’s the part most brands struggle with.

If you want help building emails and retention systems that are actually designed to drive more revenue for your brand, check the first link in the description to see how you can work with us directly.

If you want to understand how all of this applies to one of the most important moments in the customer journey, go watch this video next, where I break down how to actually build high-converting abandoned cart emails.

That video will show you how to recover more abandoned checkouts, improve conversions, and build a much stronger buying experience overall. I think you’ll get a lot out of it there. See you soon.