The global eCommerce market has evolved drastically over the past decade. With eCommerce sales expected to grow, the demand for Commerce packaging is also increasing. By 2026, the eCommerce packaging market is expected to grow to $61.55 billion from $27.04 billion in 2020.
Product packaging is not just a means to transport goods safely to the customer but also a marketing opportunity. Packaging is associated with ‘how customers perceive your products and brand. Meeting your customer’s expectations can be challenging, with all your competitors aiming for the same.
This article covers how businesses can create product packaging that speaks to their customers, building a brand image that benefits the business.
Key Considerations for Designing Product Packaging:
Know Your Audience
One of the first considerations while designing product packaging is to know your audience. Knowing who you are selling to and what your product means to your customer is primary to designing a product and its packaging. If your packaging fails to appeal to your target audience, they won’t connect with your product and brand.
How do you want your brand to be perceived?
A certain feeling is attached to a product that a business needs to evoke in the customer to deliver a satisfactory first experience with the product. A mature, sophisticated packaging for your baby-clothing brand would still get the work done but wouldn’t evoke your audience’s emotions to connect with your brand.
Established Visual branding
If you already have an established online presence, ensure that your packaging of product complements your visual branding. For instance, if you run a dropshipping business, your packaging is one of the core ways you can make an impression on your audience.
Market trends & competitors
A good start to designing product packaging is to look at what is happening in the market and conduct a competitor analysis to identify key market trends. It’ll tell you what’s working for your competitors and can be a good inspiration for starting your product branding.
Your product packaging depends on the following:
What is your product?
For the most part, your packaging depends on the product. If it’s liquid or solid, perishable or not, it would immediately drop out some packaging types and materials unsuitable for your product. You can determine the logistics and shipping for secure handling based on the product.
Who is your target customer?
Figure out your target audience and the age group they belong to. And design packaging that appeals to them based on their interests. Is it for men, women, or both? Each group has its unique interest and preferences.
Where do they buy from? Online or in-store
It’s important to consider where your customers will be buying your products. Depending on your answer to this question, you will need to cater to different aspects of buying environment.
With clarity over above mentioned three questions, you can jump into the product packaging designing process.
Elements of Product Packaging
The following are the essential components of product packaging:
- Product Name: The product title is obvious information that lets your customer identify what the product is.
- Product Description: This could be a product tagline or a small explanation of what the product does.
- Product Ingredients: A clear disclosure of the components of the product for users’ awareness.
- Product Instruction: This is the section for instructions on how to use the product for the best results and how to store it. Information like batch numbers, manufacturing, or best-before dates is also essential based on the product type.
- Imagery: Any designs or images related to the brand or product, such as logos, are also a part of product packaging.
- Other Information: Any other product-specific information, like quantity, size, barcodes, etc., is also part of the product packaging.
Steps to Designing Product Packaging
After completing all the prerequisites of product packaging comes the time to create the design based on your collected information. Let’s go through the package design process step by step.
- Research: This step has already been discussed in the previous sections of this article. Research is all about knowing your audience, their pain points, and their interests. Knowing your target audience helps craft a compelling story to connect with your brand.
- Choose the Product Container and Packaging Material: There are different layers of packaging starting from the outer container that protects your product from the surroundings. It is usually a box or the shipping bag the product is shipped in. Then there is an inner protective layer of fillers that act as the intermediary protection between the product and outer packaging. This layer consists of fillers like packing peanuts, foams, air pillows, or bubble wraps. And finally, there is the product packaging itself which contains your product.
Choose a product container that serves as protection, looks well, has no shipping barriers, and meets the customer’s expectations. Once you have decided on the product container, look at what kind of shipping container you need. A branded mailer box with a branded tap is the common practice. In addition to the product and shipping container, decide the material needed to ensure your product reaches your customer safely – a protective filler layer.
- Design the Product Package: Hire a graphic designer if you don’t have one on your team to design the packaging. It will be a one-time cost if you don’t choose to change it in the short term. Also, this is the point where all of your research and hard work would become fruitful. Make sure to incorporate all the design elements, graphics, text, and color schemes. If you have outsourced this task to a design agency or an expert freelancer, then make sure to provide them with all the details in the form of a design brief.
- Get Feedback: Before jumping into the printing process, getting feedback is a step of critical importance. Review the designs thoroughly, ensuring that it meets your design expectations. In addition, ask your peers, industry experts, and your target audience for their reviews on packaging design. Get your design revisions done in case needed. Once you are positive and confident with the final output, move ahead to the lady step of packaging designing.
- Get Samples and Start Printing: It’s time to get samples of your designed packaging with the help of a printing company. Getting samples instead of directly jumping into the mass printing gives you an extra validation layer. You are more able to replicate the experience of your customers with the product packaging in your hands. And discern if this is exactly the first impression you have been aiming for or not.
Also, feedback with a tangible sample can be more concrete. If there are aspects of the packaging you want differently, this is the time to get any alterations done. When completely satisfied with your final product packaging results, proceed with printing.
Conclusion
Product packaging is all about presenting your product. And doing a little experimentation does not hurt to create a unique product experience.
