The unboxing experience matters to your brand. It’s the closest touchpoint that brings together the company, the product, and your target audience. Here’s how to create a packaging design that will turn the unboxing of your e-commerce product into a way to retain more customers long-term.

The Unboxing Experience and Packaging Design

Packaging design is no longer just about function. Today, you can strengthen the relationship between your brand and the e-commerce consumer by creating a memorable packing design that creates an unboxing experience. 

Consider the journey of the e-commerce customer. You influence their purchase decisions through advertising, certainly, but that influence shouldn’t end with a click. Instead, you can also entice them to buy more products and create brand loyalty to include when the package arrives. To achieve this goal, the customer unboxing experience should always include some—or all—of the following elements to help your products stand out:

• Use packaging design to tell your story. You can do this both in the design of the external packaging and the materials inside.
• Brand your boxes to make them easy to recognize. One thing to consider is that there are a plethora of people touching your box all the way to the customer, and each person is also a potential customer. 
• Create an appealing positioning of the product as it’s unveiled to the customer. Opening a box with layers of shipping material is almost a necessity for package security. However, you can use those shipping materials to build your brand and heighten consumer anticipation.

Personalize the experience whenever possible to strengthen consumer loyalty. Let your clients know you appreciate their repeat business. Give them something extra, like a discount exclusive to their patronage.

Improving the Customer Experience With Packaging Design

A branded packaging design can turn the opening of a box into a consumer experience that can be fun and rewarding—and if you do it right, it can help you sell more products. For example:

• Let’s start with the package itself. Packaging design for e-commerce products is about more than just holding items safely for shipping. Consumer product goods designers should incorporate color and design to create a customized and recognizable look that inspires excitement when the package arrives.
• Tissue paper or filler should never be boring and always recyclable. You can use these mediums to create funny messaging to build the brand. Product packaging can include upsell items like coupons or even build excitement with messages like, “Here’s what you’ve been expecting.” 
• Stickers, including packaging tape, are lower-cost ways to build your brand. For example, you could use a branded label to seal a tissue paper wrap around a clothing item. Branded stickers and branded packaging tape can be applied to any size cardboard, of course, making a simple brown box a brand statement.
• Promotional material, including coupons, can even be personalized in the box to let your customers know they matter to your business. Even the packing slip can be an opportunity for branding and brand building that you might not consider.

PKG Brand Design is always on the forefront of new CPG branding and packaging initiatives; please subscribe to our blog for the latest package design industry news!