Why this idea means business : We review the importance of packaging for e-Commerce. Learn from our sample of online baskets how to make your packaging stand out on the digital shelf. Read this for design ideas to make your packaging work harder in e-Commerce.
Here’s a time-priority question marketers should ask themselves more often :-
Do I spend time on a marketing activity which EVERY customer sees, that can help save the environment, and which allows customers to tangibly interact with my brand? Or …
Do I spend time on a marketing activity which costs lots of money, is frequently ignored by my target audience and is usually soon forgotten?
We’re talking about 2 parts of the marketing mix here in case you haven’t worked it out. Packaging, which sits under product, and advertising, which sits under promotion.
You’d think the choice would be obvious. But clearly, it’s not. Because most marketers spend much more time on advertising than they ever do on packaging.
Why’s that? Well, let’s rephrase those questions.
Packaging - advertising's less glamorous cousin
Do I spend time with supply chain people and print managers who’ll drone on about colour separations and cardboard thickness? And who’ll make me spend a whole day in some god-forsaken factory in the back end of nowhere? Or …
Do I spend time with funky agency creative and media people who’ll present flashy videos on their shiny Macbooks? While bringing me fancy coffees and boosting my marketing ego that we’re creating a work of art which will win awards?
Now, maybe it’s clearer why advertising dominates your average marketer’s time.
Yes, advertising is a much more fun way to spend your day. But as per our packaging guide, there’s plenty of evidence that packaging is a far more important part of your mix. And advertising isn’t always fun with its car crash creative reviews, and awkward media sales team meetings.
Packaging can be hard work. It’s often highly technical. But it plays a vital role in your brand identity, product offer and communications. And as we’ll show, it’s where you start when you want to get more sales online.
Packaging for e-Commerce
We originally intended to go down the (digital) aisle of a few online stores and pick out some good and bad examples.
But our first store (no names, but not hard to work out) was running 2 ads with product baskets on its front page. So let’s focus on those to see what good packaging for e-Commerce looks like.
FAIRY packaging dominates this basket
What stands out immediately in that basket? It’s the big FAIRY logo in the centre of the shot, right?
Look how the contrast of the red font on a white background stands out against the clutter in this image. Fairy gets a big tick for this pack. It stands out online and in-store.
In our design principles for marketing guide, we refer to the CRAP design principles from Design for Non-Designers* by Robin Williams. CRAP as in Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity. Fairy’s packaging designer has done well on all of those. (It’s also a good example of the Von Restorff effect when people notice things which look different. See our behavioural science article for more on this).
Mars, Bulla and Oral B are at least recognisable
Look a bit closer at the other brands. Though less stand-out than Fairy, you’d easily pick out Mars, Bulla and Oral B as brand names here. So they get a pass from a brand recognition point of view. Ish. (See also our design psychology article which covers the principle that recognition is easier than recall).
However, look more closely. In this basket, is it clear which Mars product it is? Looks like chocolate bars? Might be ice cream? Look at Bulla. Excuse our ignorance, but what are “Splits” when they’re at home? Some sort of ice lolly we’d guess? But, unclear. And Oral-B? Challenging because they have less space to play with on the pack. But still, in this image, you can’t tell what product variant it is.
And the other 3 products in the basket?
Left to right, the Natural Cracker Company with sea salt and vinegar crackers. That’s quite a lot of words to fit in a small space. And that beige background behind the brand name? Not terrible. But also, not helping the contrast of the brand name on the screen.
And there seem to be many other things going on with the pack. What are those green things? Asparagus tips? Wheat sheafs? Pretty certain neither sea salt nor vinegar, so you question why they’re there at all.
Jump over to Kellogg’s. And while they’re normally good at packaging, something’s gone wrong here. Firstly, LCMs? No idea what those are. Don’t care, either. And that blue font with a yellow 3D shadow on a blue background? Doesn’t help stand out and legibility. There’s some product imagery there, but it doesn’t help with what the product is in this image.
If you also look hard enough, there’s also a small tin of Greenseas, we think Tuna. But because its green is similar to the Fairy green, it looks like it’s part of the Fairy packaging. Fail.
And finally, sadly, there’s what appears to be some Bonds socks squeezed into the side of the basket. Or maybe it’s pants? And we mean that in both senses of the word.
So, learnings about packaging for e-commerce?
First off, make sure your logo, brand name and colours stand out and are legible on a small screen. Those are a given.
But, we’re often amazed at how many companies and packaging design agencies fail to do this. Focus on sharing only relevant information on the pack. Use the least amount of text to do so.
Good design has as little detail as possible, as Dieter Rams famously stated. Packaging should follow the principles of progressive disclosure, only telling the customer what they need to know. Not everything the designer or brand manager wants them to know. (See our design psychology article for more on this).
Let’s try another online basket
What stands out in the new banner ad?
Other than the creepy bear with the heart? Scan your eyes left to right and what you pick out first is probably “Roses”.
Why?
Because again, there’s contrast. A strong colour logo on a light background.
At a push, you’d also pick out Celebrations. But that logo is harder work given it’s vertical rather than horizontal. And most people reading text in English read left to right.
So Cadbury and Mars get a pass here.
As for the other brands, we get that ‘premium’ products want to use subtle, less ‘shouty’ design cues. But Guylain and Lindt have little colour contrast and fussy fonts which are barely legible on a small screen.
If you squint hard enough, you can work out there’s some sort of L’Oreal product also sneaking in next to the Roses. But not which product it actually is.
And there’s something called Honey Bear in the background there. But unless you know what that is, the product placement shot is useless.
Maybe we’re being a little harsh?
These banner ads were clearly photoshopped together by someone at Woolw… er, the online grocer. And the brands themselves probably had little control over how their product would appear on screen.
But.
We’re pretty certain that for those brands to appear in that shot in that basket, money will have changed hands between the manufacturer and the retailer.
And of the 15 products in these baskets, only 2 we would say are using their packaging for e-Commerce to maximum effect.
That’s 13 brands who have opportunities to make their packaging for e-Commerce work harder.
What about on the shelf itself?
Well, on the shelf / category page, you get more standard pack shots with no lifestyle clutter. A standard flat image of the product. And of course a lot of sales promotion activity.
So let’s jump over to another online grocery store and see how a more standard product range works. Let’s look at the specials on the front page.
3 of these products would get a pass for the brand name being instantly easy to read.
Arnott’s, Sensodyne and Omo have good colour contrast on the names and large enough names to work on a small screen.
Interestingly, Pedigree, Steggles and Peters put the product variant name higher than the brand name at the expense of the branding. We guess they think the brand colour cues do the parent branding job.
From a design point of view, we believe Peters Original is the strongest of the 3 with Dentastix and Chicken Fingers a little too busy to work strongly online.
And as for Luv a Duck? Well now. That’s just a tough one to do packaging for. We probably don’t give a something that rhymes with duck about what they’ve done there, to be honest.
What’s the opportunity?
We were lucky to attend a conference a few years ago where one of the speakers was an e-Commerce lead at Ocado, the leading UK online grocery retailer.
His challenge to marketers was to think about what their packaging looks like on a mobile phone screen. It’s a good point. He mercilessly pulled up a range of products from the company sponsoring the event and showed all those which were ‘fails’ on a mobile screen.
And any time we’ve been involved in packaging development since then, we always ask how the packaging will look on a mobile screen i.e. Does the brand and product name stand out? Does it have good contrast? Is it legible? Is it recognisable? Does it convey the information the online shopper needs?
Looking at all the example baskets above from many of Australia’s leading FMCG companies, it seems like many of them aren’t yet asking those questions.
Conclusion - packaging for e-Commerce
So if you’re a marketer, an e-Commerce lead or a packaging agency, add these sorts of questions about mobile screens to your packaging design process. It’s a simple extra step that’ll have a big impact on whether customers notice you online. It may not be as glamorous as advertising. But it’s an important and easy way to grow your online sales.
Check out our packaging and how to get more sales online guides to learn more. Or get in touch if you need to boost your packaging for e-Commerce skills.
*As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
Photo credits
Delivery – driver handing over package : Photo by RoseBox رز باکس on Unsplash
Business meeting : Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
Owing to the rising disposable income of people, a high level of convenience and the ease to shop anytime anywhere coupled with other factors such as wider options, speed of access and global reach the E-commerce market has completely modernized the buying experience of customers.