Some Clever Tips to Remember When Making Packaging
1. When you are looking to redce your environmental impact, many businesses take the route of focusing on reducing waste and using recycleable containers, many overlook the fact that the smallest environmental impact is created when packaging is not thrown out at all! For larger businesses you should consider making your packaging indespensable by perhaps making it into a form of storage for your product, a recent example is a major coffee brand selling their jars as an initial investment, then encouraging their customers to buy plastic "re-fill bags" to top up their jar, as the plastic bags have less environmental impact than the jars. You could make a multipack packaging box into a great way of storing your product when customers just buy singles. Another method of making your packaging indespensible (especially for smaller "cult" brands) is to make your packaging a collectable. For example famous perfumes often have beautifully designed bottles that collectors will keep, or when an item is presented in a designer and high quality box, people may use it as storage rather than throwing it out. It's a good arguement for not having function purely over form to save costs; when design can be so influential.
2. Never neglect the need to update your packaging design periodically. However timeless and stylish you believe your packaging to be, there will come a day when new packaging by competitors could render it obsolete; especially with new printing and design technologies being developed constantly. Think Coca-Cola, they have timeless design but they still rebrand constantly to stay fresh. Adding a new coat of paint or a new typeface can instantly add a greater percieved value to your product and create a serge in sales. You might also consider limited edition packaging; getting an artist to come in and design something special for a limited number of your product could increase sales of your product for collectors and for fans of that artist.
3. Potentially around 10% of the UK does not have British as their first language, and you are therefore possibly holding off sales from that demographic if you only have English on your packaging. Most products have space on their box to add a small section describing the product to non-english speakers, and it is also impostant to usually display a large clear picture of your product on the front of your packaging if it is not already obvious what your box contains; this will help anyone that strugles to understand language or even jargon you might have. You never want to make your product inaccessable to anyone, you are limiting your sales over something that can very simply be changed.
4. Examine the packaging of your competitors and consider who will surround your item when it is placed on a shelf. What may seem bright and exciting in production might not attract any attention when put against colourful packaging from competitiors. You might find the answer is actually to use very simple and minimalistic packaging as this will attract the customer's attention from others. if you sell several items that all appear grouped together, such as one drink in many different flavours, you can use this to your advantage to dominate the entire area your packaging is featured in with your brand. If you have a set of very distinctive colours that make people think of your brand, then you might choose to place all your items in that colour to attract the consumer's eye to that part of the shelf.
5. Did you know that consumers actually only glance over each item on a shelf for about 0.6 seconds? Marketers may think it's essential to have all of a product's features placed on it's packaging, but it's actually very easy to scare customers off by bombarding them with features, colours and text. The best plan is to only focus on the essential features of your product, maybe a good idea is to capture attention first with design, then use a smaller print to explain the product when a customer has picked it up. Besides, too much emphasis on a desperate attempt to sell can cheapen your brand; good design is always key to selling; not so much about punchy marketing tricks you're taught in books.