I confess, I have a guilty pleasure: fashion emails with a touch of luxury about them. And IRO is one of them.
Why "guilty"? Because many things in the design and in the code are wrong, and are sometimes contrary to the good practices we strive to recommend:
- Here, the ("Evening time | Tenues de soirée") is a little cold for my taste. But that's undoubtedly part of the tone, part of the brand's editorial charter, it's their identity. At the same time, I like it, it's a bit "big world".
- Use of a giant 2.5MB PNG image for the main banner. And for what? For a depressed chick walking alone down the street after a canceled date... But it's beautiful!
- The same goes for the "product" visuals, which are a little too large. (but no doubt to answer to the needs of Retina displaysbecause the target is probably more interested in the latest iPhone than an old Motorola).
- Calls to action in English: it's more stylish to write "Shop now". Whereas "Buy now"...
- No product title. No description. No price. Yet the little sequined jacket is still €545! "But no I'm not going to scream, but no... HOW MUCH?"
- No interaction on the product visuals, not even a little hover effect on the buttons, nothing! It's all very quiet.
- A mobile rendering identical to the Desktop version: not sure this was intended, given the complexity of the code. It's unfortunate, because we had bet everything on these Retina visuals...
- A completely messed-up rendering on Outlook desktop software or Outlook Office 365. It's not too bad...
- For the code: an old-fashioned HTML 4.01 Doctype.
- A mass of code for an absent carousel.
- Not much has been done to optimize accessibility at the code level: no semantic HTML tags for text, obsolete tags used, no
langinformed... - Attributes
titleadded on links (whose contents don't seem to match the text, also a mistake I think...). - Attributes
data-linktoon the links, but empty... - Relatively heavy final code (65 kilobytes) for a really slim design.
And yet: I like this type of model, very simple, very raw, very uncluttered. In conclusion, I'd say that this design fascinates me (and it's not the only one) because of its sobriety and minimalism. On the other hand, I think the code could be optimized, simplified and improved, in terms of weight, quality and accessibility. If you offer luxury products, you can afford HTML integration to match your products. Would you use acrylic fabric to sew a Chanel dress? Or serve your guests tucs with your Dom Pérignon?