How wide should my emails be?
This could sound like a pointless question, but there are a couple of implications from having an email that is too wide or too narrow.
Most email clients won't allocate the full width of the screen to display your email. Gmail has advertising running down the one side, and programmes like Outlook or Mail.App often have menus using up prime screen real estate. If you don't take this into account your email could end up being too big for your reader's screen. If you have 400 emails coming at you every day, and one of them is so wide that you need to scroll horizontally to see all the content, you're probably going to delete it before you've read it. I would.
At the same time, having an email that's too narrow is frustrating and tiring to read, as your eyes keep having to jump back to the left more often than is comfortable. So what is ideal? We suggest limiting your email width to 550-600 pixels. This should give you enough room to lay out your content nicely.
And the height?
Obviously the amount of content in your emails will determine how long they are, but keep in mind that there may be a preview pane and that the area of your email displayed there should be able to hold your reader's attention. The average preview pane is 300-500 pixels high, and so all the important and catchy parts of your email should be included in this section.
And remember - we have over 30 fully tested design templates at your disposal, if you'd like to leave the counting of pixels up to us.
