Overview
Customers choose to shop from online stores for a reason: flexible returns, better value, and the convenience of anytime access. But with the explosion of online businesses flooding the market, standing out takes more than just a good product. Strategic eCommerce packaging is now a brand’s frontline in building recognition and customer loyalty.
Innovative packaging does more than protect against damage during transportation. It elevates the unboxing experience, turning routine orders into emotional brand touchpoints. For businesses that get it right, packaging becomes a tool for increasing efficiency, reducing packaging cost, and amplifying customer experience—all at once.
From the shape and size of your cardboard boxes to how your design supports the shipping process, every detail impacts how your product performs in a crowded space—yes, even on Amazon. And when it’s done right, it doesn’t just reduce time and returns—it turns every person who opens your box into a potential brand ambassador.
This article gives you ten proven ways to level up your eCommerce packaging. If you’re ready to lead the market with packaging that delivers impact and loyalty, let’s get started.
Create a Branded Packaging
Branded packaging is an excellent strategy for distinguishing your products from others. To achieve more branded packaging, you need to customize it. This will help you stand out from the competition and create a lasting image of your brand in your customers’ minds. Branded e-commerce packaging is specifically designed to put the focus on your brand and make a lasting, memorable impression on your customers’ minds.
Even though it is a more luxurious choice, the more lovely and specific your package is, the more likely clients will share it on social media, bringing more attention and potential to your business.
Unboxing videos on social media are just one example of how custom-branded ecommerce packaging can help you reach a broader target audience on social media. These videos are vastly popular on YouTube and other platforms such as Instagram, and research shows that one in five clients views unboxing videos before placing an order.
Custom Tape and Labels
An alternative to using fully branded packaging for your e-commerce products is to use custom tapes and labels, which is a more cost-effective option. Instead of spending much on expensive custom boxes, custom tapes can do the same job just as nicely. These options may not provide a branded look, but they can still be a powerful way to showcase your brand to your customers.
Using tapes and labels on your product packaging has several advantages, such as providing additional protection during shipping and handling. Custom tapes and labels offer extra security to your package during transit and handling. When you use custom tape, you can ensure that your packages will remain secure during transit.
Standard packaging tape can be tampered with quickly, but custom tape provides an added layer of security, allowing clients to determine if their shipments have been tampered with. Custom labels allow for personalized instructions to be printed, ensuring that the provider transporting your package handles it with utmost care.
Custom Stickers and Tissue Paper
Another good e-commerce packaging idea is to use custom stickers and tissue paper. Custom-branded stickers can be positioned outside your shipment to enhance the look of your box’s surface, but they also have other uses.
Branding your e-commerce packaging involves more than just the packaging itself. With box customization, you can add custom stickers to distinguish your brand. Personalizing tissue paper and sealing it with a custom sticker is an excellent way to showcase professionalism and enhance your brand identity.
People love unboxing gifts, and wrapping your product in this type of custom-branded tissue paper will create a sense of pleasure when they open it. Including more stickers for the purchaser is a humorous and playful way to showcase your logo. People love tremendously sticky labels on ordinary objects, such as computers or water bottles. So, have fun with your branding; the purchasers will recognize it!
Eco-Friendly Packaging
The next set of innovative approaches to custom e-commerce packaging focuses on sustainability and the environment, with companies pushing for eco-friendly solutions. If your brand’s logo is centered on sustainability and eco-friendliness, you’ll be pleased to know that green packaging options are available.
With the increasing demand for sustainable and environmentally friendly packaging options in all industries, e-commerce packaging developments are inevitable. What are the latest innovations in packaging for more sustainable options? It is all about using eco-friendly packaging material for custom packaging. This will also show that you care about the planet while representing your brand.
Use Packaging Filler
You can use various packaging fillers for your e-commerce packaging.
Packaging paper
This infill can satisfy many needs, making it one of the most common types of infill. Packaging paper can be used to wrap individual items for extra safety and balled up to fill in empty areas and shield corners. Best of all, this filler can be reused and recycled without any problem. A similar but even cheaper alternative to sustainable packaging paper is recycled newspaper, mainly if you aren’t delivering various objects.
Bubble wrap
We all know this about this packaging filler. Stomping on it not only makes you laugh, but it also provides a flexible infill type. Bubble wrap creates a completely steady cushion for breakable products and is highly elastic, so it can contour your product and fill your container.
Crinkle paper
This infill is whimsical and flexible. Crinkle paper, without problems, fills all empty areas within packing containers and creates a cushion around your product. It is likewise compostable and recyclable. The drawback is that it could be messy (those little bits of paper just go everywhere), and the base price of this filler is relatively high.
Create an Unboxing Experience
Now that you have examined the gap in your e-commerce Box recall how clients will interact with it once they open their purchases. Many people experience taking pictures and sharing them on social media, so remember this when creating a customized mailer container.
Creating a simple unpacking reveal assists you and your clients expand relationships over the years. Relationships, whether online or offline, are extraordinarily crucial!
If your purchasers feel special, you can make your retail packaging more luxurious using rigid packaging material. Rigid box packaging adds a special touch and gives your customers a more personal touch. It enhances the opportunities for upselling in the future. If they had a practical experience with you, they may tell their friends about you. Different standards, including rate and quality, have a role.
It makes a commercial enterprise cross-viral online because people need to share the exciting unboxing experience of your products immediately. So, take your client’s role, open the box, and think of the latest techniques to wonder about them.
Use Recycled Materials
Alternatively, to reduce your environmental footprint, using recycled cardboard and kraft paper while creating your packaging is another extraordinary and sustainable way to protect your environment. These recyclable packaging solutions help lower waste. Kraft mailers, for example, use one hundred percent recycled paper.
They are lightweight, low-priced, and certainly biodegradable, which makes them a stable alternative when considering green options for your ecommerce packaging. Also really good to consider are air pillows made from recycled content material or recycled paper tape.
It reduces the quantity of plastic you use for your packaging, and to make things better, air pillows may be reused and recycled. Recycled paper tape is also an alternative. Since the tape is currently always necessary, close the packaging taps. So, you need to consider recycled materials for your ecommerce brand awareness.
Utilize Endless Possibilities
You never know when your product will take off in the marketplace, and you may feel pressure to expand your range. It’s beneficial to incorporate the possibility of extensibility in your product packaging design. And it is only possible with custom packaging.
Good packages are always designed with the future in mind. You could declare that you will broaden your product’s packaging. To achieve this goal, you may need to decrease your sales volume. Customers’ consideration makes releasing a brand-new product in the same packaging as the old one less challenging.
Create a brand-new packaging design for your newly launched products from the outset to capture the attention of your existing clients, who already have a loyal following.
Create Something Fun
The goal is to make it less complicated for users to use the product while having fun. Make your product packaging a laugh to use. Aside from the products themselves, shoppers will begin shopping for them for enjoyment. So, make your packaging more exciting and enjoyable for your potential buyers.
Ease of Handling
Ease of handling is a crucial aspect that requires significant consideration while designing packaging for an online business because it involves shipping. The ease of management is a vital element of any product packaging. Depending on the product, provide handles or grooves to make it easy for the purchaser to handle and use.
If your packaging is inconvenient, customers will search for alternative solutions. So, if your product has a market advantage, you can only afford an irrelevant package.
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Data-Driven Brand Development
Want a best-selling brand? SmashBrand is a packaging design agency for makers of fast-moving, durable, and consumer packaged goods who want to see a performance lift in retail. Our PathToPerformance™ process guarantees a brand performance lift on retail shelves. From strategy to design, we take consumer brands through our Path To Performance™, setting them up for long-term success. Book a time to discuss your project with our team.
A seasoned veteran in the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) industry, Jason Vaught brings a wealth of knowledge and hands-on experience as the director of content and marketing for SmashBrand. His comprehensive role at the forefront of brand communication ensures that CPG brands remain well-informed about the suite of services SmashBrand offers. Furthermore, his insights derived from the company's strategy, design, and testing services are invaluable to brand owners and managers seeking expert guidance.
From his early endeavors in launching a successful sports nutrition brand that gained prominence in significant bodybuilding and fitness retail spaces to his entrepreneurial ventures in kick-starting multiple brick-and-mortar and e-commerce startups across diverse industries, Jason's career is studded with substantial milestones. Notably, he has innovated numerous products later embraced by leading industry brands, showcasing his knack for anticipating market demands and setting trends.
Jason's journey in the CPG industry commenced at age 21. Over the years, he has worn multiple hats, ranging from a manufacturer and retailer to a distributor and brand owner. This multifaceted experience equips him with the rare ability to offer practical advice grounded in real-world expertise. His mission is to guide and support other CPG brand owners, directors, and managers on their path to success.
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