If you’re an online retailer, one of the most important aspects of your business is making sure your products get to your customers without damage. As a result, it’s important to pay close attention to the details when you’re selecting the right box for your products.
With the right packaging you will attract new customers, ensure product safety, and preserve long-term freshness. Consequently, you’ll be able to reinforce your brand’s quality and trust within your customers and increase long-term profitability.
All things considered, poor packaging decisions can be detrimental. In fact, it’s more costly for e-commerce businesses to replace damaged goods than investing in good packaging from the start.
So, how can you choose the right box for your product? Well, in an ideal world, you can find a “one size fits all” solution. However, in reality there’s no perfect packaging solution because there are several factors that need to be considered.
To aid you in selecting the right packaging specific to your product, we’ve created the following guide.
Packaging Material
When it comes to packaging materials, there are a lot of options you can choose from. For example, you can opt for food-grade cardboard boxes if you’re selling pre-packaged food. Food-grade cardboard boxes are relatively common, budget friendly and recyclable.
On the other hand, if you’re planning to ship apparel, t-shirts and non-fragile items, you can opt to choose mailer bags as an alternative to cardboard solutions. Poly mailers are lightweight, easy to ship, flexible and can even be customized to be water-resistant and compostable.
With recent product developments, you can readily find more eco-friendly packaging options. For instance, there are many alternatives to plastic such as cornstarch and bamboo packaging. These materials are food-grade certified and unlike plastic, they’re compostable. If sustainability is important to your business, eco-friendly packaging materials may be something you’d like to consider.
It’s important to understand your products needs when you are choosing the best packaging material.
Size And Shape
When selecting the right box for your product, the ease a customer has of opening the package should be a priority.
The last thing you want is a package that’s going to take time and effort to open. Even worse, the customer may resort to aggressively cutting into the package (guilty as charged) and damaging the contents.
Your packaging solution must never weigh more than the actual product itself because it will require extra force from the customer to open the box.
At the same time, it’s important that the box adheres to the product’s dimensions to prevent damage during transportation. A way to achieve this is by using custom inserts. Custom inserts are a great way to optimize space within any given box and reduce packaging waste.
In addition to custom inserts, you can opt for flexible packaging solutions. Flexible packaging is a growing trend and are usually ideal for pre-packaged foods and liquids because they take the form of the product. This provides more unity between the overall package, the product and provides additional security.