1. Making the whole signature one picture

A signature saved as a single image looks the same everywhere, until a mail client does not download it. Classic Outlook is set by default to block pictures from the internet, so its readers see an empty frame where your name and number should be, and nothing in it can be tapped, copied or searched for. Build it as text with small pictures in it, and the words still read when the pictures do not load.HTML and image signatures, compared.

2. Making it wider than a phone

A signature wider than the screen makes Apple Mail on an iPhone shrink the whole email to fit, and other phone apps scroll it sideways. Keep it to 320 pixels wide, and check it on a phone, not only on the laptop you made it on. Every size that matters, explained.

3. An animation that starts empty

Older desktop Outlook, and current Outlook with animation switched off in Windows, shows only the first frame of a GIF. Most animations start from nothing, so that frame is blank, and those readers get an empty box. Make the first frame the finished picture; every animation Animated Signature renders starts on it.Which versions of Outlook play GIFs.

4. Using a web font

A signature cannot bring its own font with it. Gmail ignores fonts loaded from the web, and Can I email records that classic Outlook for Windows can fall back to Times New Roman when a font is declared that way. Use fonts your readers already have installed, such as Arial, Georgia or Verdana; the builder offers ten fonts like those, and no others.

5. Attaching the pictures

Some ways of making a signature attach its pictures to every email, and some mail clients then list a logo and four icons as attachments on every message you send. Host the pictures instead and link to them by their address. Every picture in an Animated Signature signature is hosted.

6. Every network you are on

A row of twelve icons is a row nobody reads. Choose the few places you want people to go, usually your website, LinkedIn and one more that suits your work, such as a booking page or Instagram. The builder offers 10 networks and shows 5 at most, and a network you switch off is removed rather than left as a gap.

7. A tracking pixel

A hidden image that reports when an email is opened sounds useful and says less than it seems: Apple Mail can fetch images before anybody reads the email. In the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office treats tracking pixels as covered by the consent rules for storage and access technologies. Count clicks instead, which say someone acted.Click and open tracking, compared.

8. Forgetting the replies

Most of the email people send is replies, and many clients treat replies separately. In Gmail and Outlook the default for replies and forwards is its own setting, and Zoho Mail adds no signature to replies until you tick Add signature to all my email replies. Set it for both, or choose a shorter signature for replies on purpose.

In the UK, a limited company's business emails count as business letters, and have to show the company's registered name, number, place of registration and registered office. Put them under the signature in small type, once, rather than in every design choice above it. What UK law requires in an email signature.

10. Pasting into the wrong box

Paste a signature into a box that only takes plain text and the pictures, colours and links disappear; paste its code into a box that expects formatting and the code shows up in your emails. Apple Mail strips formatting unless Always match my default message font is cleared first. Paste into the client's formatted signature editor, and use the code only where a client asks for HTML.