Make your business more successful and profitable online

Packaging is a valuable marketing tool. Treating this particular spend as an investment can improve business performance and increase customer satisfaction, lending to loyalty and repeat sales. The packaging that protects a product in transit plays an important role in the customer’s journey and may be their first tangible experience of the online brand. Considering the purpose, design and branding of the postal packaging used has a significant influence on the customer’s first moment of truth.
Packaging acts as a communication tool between the brand and the consumer and has the ability to influence satisfaction levels. Its function is to complete the practical ‘protection’ duty as well as act an enabler to satisfy a customer’s expectations of the brand.
For an ecommerce business, packaging to protect a product in transit from the warehouse to the delivery destination is an unavoidable spend, although this ‘Goods Not For Resale’ (GNFR) item has vast potential to maximise sales success and influence customer loyalty.
Converting this necessary spend into a business asset requires some clever planning and collaborative thinking. This starts at the end of the packing line understanding the customers average basket size per order and trend of items purchased together. This data will help you to create a range of packaging products to optimise the performance of your outbound deliveries. Having the correct size packaging range will;

• Improve presentation
• Reduce on outbound delivery costs (if using volumetric weight delivery option)
• Save time in the pick and pack operation

The brands that come full circle, from simply wanting the cheapest and most practical packaging products to understanding how smart packaging, whilst an initial investment, is cost-effective in the long term, have a greater competitive advantage.

As featured in ‘How to Sell Online’ by Christer Holloman