"Why are there two versions for each email. An HTML version and a text version?"

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Short Answer

Because a small percentage of the world still uses text-based email readers, or do not allow HTML

Detailed Explanation

For example, if you use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo email, etc...  all of these services allow richly-formatted HTML emails.  This allows you to send emails with colors, nice font formatting, pictures, etc...  At the time of this writing, there are about 5% of email readers, programs, or clients, that cannot read this nice HTML formatted emails.  For example, cell phones quite often can only read text-based emails, because cell phones can be fairly simplistic devices.  There are other reasons why people can only get text only emails such as they are using an old email program, or they have high security restrictions. 

If you still do not understand the difference, here is a simply analogy.  HTML emails is comparable to Microsoft Word, while text emails are comparable to Notepad.  In notepad, you can't even add a simply hyperlink like this shop online.  Instead it would look like this:    http://www.google.com/search?q=shop+online    So, I might need to have some more instructions in the text version, like:

  Please copy and paste this link into your browser to shop online: http://www.google.com/search?q=shop+online