When should you use Hero image loads?
email-hero-image-renders · visual · recommended
When should you use this check?
Run this on any campaign whose top image is doing the work — a product launch, a seasonal promotion, an event invitation. The hero is the first thing a reader sees and often the only thing above the fold, so a reference that fails turns the opening of your email into an empty box. It is worth running per client and width, since an asset can resolve in one environment and fail in another for reasons that have nothing to do with the file.
When should you not?
Skip it on sends that have no hero by design: plain-styled outreach, transactional receipts, service notices. It is also not the check for whether the image is the *right* one, whether it is sized well, or whether the message survives with images blocked — those are the change-detection, image-rendering and images-off checks respectively. If your concern is specifically that assets are hosted somewhere insecure or unresolvable, the image-source check answers that at source level more cheaply.
What does it inspect?
The primary hero or banner image in the email body must load and render fully.
What does a failure mean?
A failure means the hero did not render in the captured client and width. The cause is usually the reference rather than the design: an asset that was never uploaded to the sending environment, a path that worked in staging, a host that will not serve over https, or a content-id left dangling by an export. Occasionally it is client-specific behaviour, in which case the same run passing elsewhere is the clue.
What are the Standard defaults — and why?
This check has no tunable thresholds. It is a rendered presence judgement — the hero either resolved and appeared in the captured message or it did not — with no numbers, patterns or lists to configure. The only variables are which clients and widths you render, and those are job settings rather than parameters of the check.
How does an agent call it?
{
"type": "email",
"validations": [
"email-hero-image-renders"
]
}
Who governs the Standard?
Schemafirst.org publishes community-governed standards for digital QA. ArbiterQA is a sponsor and commercial licensee of those standards; citation does not mean Schemafirst operates ArbiterQA.
Author ArbiterQA · Reviewed by ArbiterQA · 2026-08-14