While many email marketers put too much focus on heavy design vs. usable architecture, online retailer Skate Warehouse switched gears a bit with a very simple approach to one of their holiday emails. There were some nice elements here, and several in need of improvement.

What We Like:

1. Simplicity of the Product Layout: It’s not convoluted with unnecessary design elements and each product is focused.

2. Multiple Products: Instead of just providing 3 featured products, they give 12 options. Since their layout is very clean, they can get away with more product.

3. Use of Gift Cards: Nice touch with having three images of a gift cards. On one end, it provides a great alternative if you’re not ‘in the know’ of their products, but it’s a nice simple touch to make it look like an actual gift card. (We are not sure if they actual mail a physical card or provide a gift code)

4. MSRP Price: They include the suggested retail price along with their price, which helps to drive value.

Areas of Improvement:

1. Design: While we like the simplicity, it does look a bit ‘templated.’ This can be corrected with improved design elements on the categories and main hero graphic. For the latter, the green font is somewhat difficult to read.

2. Click-Through Elements: While the simplicity works for them, there are simple elements that will increase CTR. For starters, there is no primary call to action in the hero graphic, plus for each of the products, a simple ‘get it’ ‘learn more’ ‘buy now’ button will likely help. Additionally, having improved formatting on the actual pricing would help. There are probably a dozen other elements that would improve click-through.

3. Pre-Header:  In a previous post, we briefly touched on the benefit of testing your pre-header. Here, at least they included a pre-header with ‘view the online version’ which many companies forget about. But this real-estate can be much better leveraged to reemphasize the promotion and other key elements.

This email is a good start to mixing up extremely design-heavy layouts. There are, however, many areas of improvement to make this email perform much better. As always, we hope they are testing extensively to see what works with their subscribers.