From On-Shelf to Online: Ecommerce For CPG Brands.

There is a widely held assumption that Ecommerce is an easier strategy for CPG success. The idea of low overhead and easier management are enticing features for selling your consumer packaged goods online. CPG Ecommerce is not that simple.

Without the right Ecommerce strategy, your website may become a glorified business card where the only customers visiting your site do so because of existing brand awareness. Listen up if you are an established CPG brand or a new emerging brand beginning with a DTC strategy. This article provides a long-term approach to CPG success in retail stores and online platforms.

CPG Ecommerce Starts With Product Packaging

In the world of online shopping, it is your product packaging that gets the greatest eyeballs. Successful Amazon FBA sellers are a good example of CPG marketers who understand the importance of product image sets. 3D image sets make the product more realistic, are closer to how consumers handle a CPG product during consideration and increase both imagery and messaging stickiness.

Point being, be it on-shelf or online, it all starts with building the most effective product packaging. If you haven’t had a brand refresh in a while, consider reviewing your existing packaging before deciding on your Ecommerce design.

Here’s a tip: Speaking of product packaging, rather than having photos for each panel of your product, create an experience by having a bottle image that rotates 360 degrees.

Lead With an On-Shelf Strategy

All effective strategies begin with the end in mind. Even D2C brands need to respect the power of in-store shopping. Shopping in retail locations still makes up most CPG purchases, and it is the experience that makes the difference. This experience also gives your brand greater insight into how shoppers feel about your product. So you should test for on-shelf performance even if exclusively focused on building an Ecommerce strategy.

With product performance testing, there is no better method than using a simulated buying environment. Before you build out your online strategy, test your product in the real world for purchase consideration, purchase intent, and brand recall.

This is true even if your brand has established market share in a competitive industry. You cannot solely depend on your company’s history for success on a digital shelf. Before making a full-fledged assault to grab much of the growing Ecommerce market share, your packaging needs peak performance, no matter where eyeballs see it.

Testing your product packaging with new consumers removes the assumption that your current brand recall will be the foundation for your brand’s success.

Traveling down the Virtual Aisle

DTC brands might assume that they are free from the inconveniences and frustrations that they would experience with retailers. But if you think that your online strategy doesn’t have a middleman, you couldn’t be further from the truth.

Search engines are the retailer for the official online retailers of the CPG industry. Selling directly from your website requires a retailer strategy that is more comprehensive than standing out on-shelf.

A CPG company will compete with brands for both paid and organic positioning in Google Shopping & organic search. But you’re not just competing against competitive CPG brands, you’re also competing against review sites, recipes, and more!

For this reason, many brands avoid this type of online marketing strategy, but even a social media strategy comes with a similar experience.

Fact, digital commerce is not easier, it is just different. If you want to win in today’s integrated commerce landscape, you need to create a symbiotic relationship between your on-shelf and online sales. With the right strategy, one will complement the other.

Entering the Evaluation Stage

Consideration of your product occurs once a prospective consumer reaches your website. Different from a traditional shelf, there is no direct competition once they click on your CPG product. Now, all they see is your landing page, with the message you hope is strong enough to bring them to the point of purchase.

This is where the article gets juicy.

Designing Based On Your Product Packaging

Are you going to listen to us and gather the right data through on-shelf product testing? If so, you will now have the most important graphic design element and product messaging, taking consumers from evaluation to the register.

Unless you are building demographic-specific landing pages, it is what lives on your product packaging that will be the central theme of your website. Your imagery and messaging should resonate with your brand essence. It should flow from the website logo to the product packaging, all the way to the footer of your website.

Amplify Your Product Messaging

Like our strategy for on-shelf product testing, your website development process begins with a white design with sales copy that is most important to your conversation with the consumer. This begins by amplifying your product messaging by taking the bullets and turning them into brief explanations of their meaning.

This doesn’t mean long-form, as online consumer behavior shows that they will scan, not read, your sales page. So extend your primary message so that it is long enough for them to get the gist but short enough to get them to the next purchase driver.

Add What Didn’t Make the Package

Product packaging only holds so much space. Through testing, you will have a deep insight into the most important purchase drivers, but adding all of them may lead to clutter and a reduction in buyer intent. Your website is a perfect opportunity to include sales copy that missed the pack.

Thanks to not so new advances that many top web development agencies employ, it is easy to include these messages in your responsive web design. Just make sure you take the same approach to your packaging, testing how these messages impact consumers “add to cart” action. Testing for message resonance will undeniably affect your Ecommerce sales.

Match your Package Design With Your Website Design

This might sound obvious, but there are countless sites that create a disconnect between their website and their product packaging. Unless your website includes sub-brands, your overall website theme should have brand elements that match what we find on pack.

Bob’s Red Mill is a good example of this process. Their font style, color scheme, and imagery have all considerations for both on-pack and online success. While not exactly the same, there certainly isn’t any friction between the label and design of the website.

Let the Page Breathe

Like you should let a label breathe, you should also let your website design breathe. There is no faster way to have the Ecommerce audience hit the exit button than by having a website that is both cluttered.

Your brain may explode with ideas about what you want to put on the page, but don’t let it get carried away. Just like with your product packaging, test each page’s asset to determine its viability in the overall design. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Anything that does not make the cut in the sales page can become a part of a content marketing strategy to support the success of your product.

Create a Visual Experience

Stir up the imagination of your consumer. The benefit of having the consideration phase be online vs. in hand is using imagery to stir up emotions, experiences, and subjects that are important to shoppers. Alcohol marketing does a great job of removing you from your current stressors and putting you in your favorite location with your favorite people. Even if selling a bag of almonds, make the same level of consideration with your sales page.

Making it to the Register

Here is where most brands fail. Most CPG companies minimize the product at the point of check out. Your product doesn’t get smaller at the register in a store, so why should it get smaller on your checkout page?

According to Baymard Institute, 68% of consumers abandon online shopping carts. Compare that to how few people tell the clerk they have changed their mind about a product. So while we should congratulate you for getting your product to the checkout page, we should remind you that your-job-is-not-done. Time to get to work!

Companies such as Amazon have recognized this issue. Each product page has a buy now button and it is why they made the now illegal dash buttons (such a shame!). But not everybody likes a spontaneous purchase without consideration. The checkout page is and will always be an important page that requires sales optimization.

You have a product packaging strategy, you’ve got an add to cart strategy, and now you need a checkout strategy. Where most CPG brands focus on upsells at the point of purchase, they may make more money by increasing the number of people who buy the intended item. Having a focus on upselling before purchase could create squirrel syndrome where shoppers investigate that new shiny object, forgetting why they first showed up on the website.

Maybe you should save the upsell until after shoppers have made their intended purchase.

Your Second Sales Page

Think of your checkout page as your second sales page. The space you have for selling your product depends on the catalog of products you offer. Amazon has a hard time with this since its catalog is so wide that they need to leave room for a shopping basket full of products.

Your CPG catalog is not as extensive, but you still will not sell in the same way as your main page. Once you have determined a safe space for your image and copy, create it accordingly. A spirit seltzer drink might include an image of two friends with their cans at the beach as they smile into the sunset. Couple this with an easy checkout process, your demographics preferred payment methods, and you have yourself a recipe for success.

Your Split Testing From Beginning to End

Most testing occurs on the sales page, but we strongly advise you not to get stuck in the middle. You need to test from beginning to end if you want your CPG brand to experience serious growth. This means starting with the initial design process all the way to where shoppers come back for a repeat purchase.

Package Design Agency

Do you want to maximize your CPG sales? SmashBrand helps companies experience customer success through package design strategy and on-shelf testing. Our methodology builds brand awareness for new products while encouraging brand loyalty in line extension.

Discuss your project with our team to find out how we can help you build a best-selling brand.