Luckily, it is possible to correct them or avoid them altogether.

When you take a proactive approach to packing and fulfillment mistakes, you immediately free up more time, energy, and resources, and create space for your team to focus on more important things – like growing your ecommerce business.

Here’s your guide:

Why Packaging Matters

For this point, we’re going to ask you to consider two scenarios. Here’s the first:

You get home from work one evening, and there’s a package on your doorstep. It’s in a brown box, wrapped in brown tape, and dented on three corners. The address is scribbled in sharpie. When you open it, packing peanuts cascade out onto your floor, like some horrible styrofoam waterfall.

The second scenario is this:

You get home from work one evening, and there’s a package on your doorstep. It’s wrapped in durable brown paper, entirely intact, and neatly presented. Your name and address are printed on a branded shipping label, and the contents inside are protected by plastic shipping pillows.

Now, which of these experiences leaves the better impression?

The answer is easy, of course: the second! Unboxing the second is a much more enjoyable experience than the first.

Unfortunately, lots of ecommerce companies are guilty of the first scenario. They send out products in horrible packaging, and it makes a difference. After all, your product packaging is one of the first experiences a customer has with a product they purchased online, and the way it’s arranged says a lot about the company that shipped it.

In a world where ecommerce is more competitive than ever before, you can’t afford to send out sloppy packages to customers, and you definitely can’t afford to be known as a company that doesn’t care about your shipping or fulfillment.

8 Packaging & Fulfillment Mistakes to Avoid

Whether you’re a new ecommerce brand, or an established company looking for ways to serve your customers a bit better, avoiding these packaging mistakes is essential to your success.

1. Not Offering Shipping Options

Shipping is one of the most critical parts of the ecommerce customer experience.

If you don’t let customers choose a shipping option, you’re bound to lose a good amount of them. Don’t forget that 63% of suburban shoppers report that shipping costs are their least favorite part of online shopping and that 80% of online shoppers report that shipping cost and speed have a direct impact on their purchasing decisions.

With this in mind, offer several shipping options for your customers to choose from. One should be an economy option, and at least one should offer express service.

2. Ignoring Customer Input

When it comes to shipping and fulfillment, you can’t afford to ignore customer feedback.

Instead, you’ve got to pay attention to feedback about delivery delays, shipping packages and service providers, and schedules. The more you heed these things, the better your ecommerce store will perform.

3. Not Using Custom Boxes

Remember that first scenario we laid out? Cheap, ill-suited packaging makes a poor impression on your customers, and it’s not something you want your brand associated with.

Today, it pays to put some work into using the right packaging, something that you can even consider using packaging design software to ensure efficacy. A variety of services offer custom boxes for ecommerce that can be used to really wow your customers. First impressions are EVERYTHING in ecommerce. Going the extra mile to add some zazzle to your package will make all the difference.

As a general rule, the packages you use should take the weight of your items, their dimensions, and their need for protection into account. Not only will this protect your items during transport, but it’ll create a positive customer experience when they arrive.

4. Not Calculating Shipping Expenses

Shipping costs are a fact of life for ecommerce businesses. If you’re not calculating them exactly, you risk creating overhead costs you can’t bear comfortably.

With this in mind, be sure to pay attention to hidden charges, like surcharges, residential and weekend delivery fees, and fees associated with recipient signatures. Weed out the features you don’t need, and make sure you know how much you can expect to pay for the ones you do.

5. Not Doing Inventory of Your Shipping Supplies

You keep tabs on your inventory, so why not your shipping supplies?

If you run out of shipping supplies, it’s tough to get your products out in a timely fashion, and this can have a major impact on the well-being of your company. With this in mind, establish a system for keeping track of your shipping supplies and creating reorder triggers that keep you from running low on anything.

6. Not Preparing for Package Changes

It’s not uncommon for carriers to make changes to package prices and shipping policies.

If you’re not prepared to absorb these changes, you put yourself at risk of price overruns and other budgeting issues. To avoid this problem, it’s essential to keep in frequent touch with shipping carriers and remain updated about alterations they intend to make.

7. Not Validating Customer Addresses

While a customer’s supplied address is usually right, validating it will save you expensive shipping mistakes and overruns. Luckily, this is easy to avoid when you use a shipping software with built-in address verification features.

8. Using Shipping Peanuts

This goes hand-in-hand with using the wrong packaging for your shipments.

If it’s difficult for the customer to open, navigate, or clean up, it shouldn’t have any place in your fulfillment pipeline. Instead, opt for more straightforward plastic “pillows” or cardboard inserts to stabilize items in your boxes.

Better Shipping Starts Here

If you run an ecommerce company, shipping and fulfillment are two of the most important functions your company provides. Unfortunately, lots of online stores get these two things wrong, and it has a detrimental impact on the customer/company relationship. In the world of subscription box services and increased fulfillment, this is truer now than ever before.

When you create a “wow” factor with your packaging, it reflects directly on your brand as a whole and can go a long way toward making your customers more willing to purchase from you again.

It’s no secret that ecommerce is a less sustainable industry than brick-and-mortar retail. There is significantly more transportation involved, and e-tailers must protect their products from potential damages between order placement and shipment arrival.

It appears that decreased sustainability is the price to pay for convenience. but we’ll let you in on a little secret: you can change your ecommerce packaging strategy and make it sustainable with just a few simple swaps.

You’ll even be on trend. Recent ecommerce packaging statistics find that the demand for sustainable materials worldwide will almost double in five years to reach $63.3 billion.

Read on to find more ecommerce packaging tips that can help you reduce your carbon footprint and become more econ-conscious.

Ecommerce Sustainability

The recent demand for sustainable/ethical products has marked a shift in ecommerce offerings, and it has inspired many retailers to change their packaging. Consider this statistic: 95% of consumers believe packaging significantly influences their online purchase experience.

When you’re selling online, your packaging is the first experience a customer has with your brand. All too often, ecommerce purchases come with multiple boxes, plastics, Styrofoam and other materials that will leave a bad taste in the environmentally-conscious consumer’s mouth.

Custom eco-friendly packaging packs a double-punch by giving your customer a memorable experience while also letting them know you care about Mother Nature. Though initial investment can be costly, the payoff is far greater in terms of customer loyalty and brand sentiment.

Social Consciousness

2018 was the year of brands taking hard stances on social issues, from Nike’s partnership with Colin Kaepernick to the embarrassing Pepsi commercial featuring Kendall Jenner. Both campaigns generated significant buzz online (albeit for different reasons) and opened the door for other companies to incorporate social issues into their marketing strategies.

In fact, 87% of retailers say taking a stand on social issues is worth the risk, and 83% say failing to take a stand can impact their bottom line. This means it’s prime time to take a stance on something like sustainability, which will win over prospective customers who are looking to shop with eco-conscious brands.

Sustainability is the number one driver of consumer behavior, according to a famous Nielsen report. Researchers polled 30,000 consumers in 60 countries around the world to determine how people felt about brands and how those feelings impact buying behavior, and the overwhelming response was that consumers, especially millennials, will pay more for sustainability. While 66% of global consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable goods, that number jumps to 73% for millennials.

Interestingly enough, nearly half (49%) of those consumers are likely to share their purchases on social media, which can further generate chatter about your online store’s sustainable packaging and practices.

Unboxing & Social Media

In a recent Shorr study, they found that premium shoppers (those who spend at least $200 per month or more) place an added value on custom packaging design. Furthermore, the study also found that a mere 11% of customers are satisfied with the packaging that they get today. As you can see, there’s a massive gap in the market where online retailers can seize the opportunity for branding and shareability to social media, which offer ROI in the form of user-generated content and much more.

Packaging is part of the reason subscription boxes have proven to be so successful. The attractive packaging adds appeal to their contents, and consumers (24.1 million of them) look forward to the unboxing experience every time they receive a shipment.

Ecommerce packaging can also drive improved loyalty and retention which can increase the average order value substantially. Concurrent studies have found that a returning customers spends 67% more on their second visit – helping drive home the notion that you want to win customers over from the get-go with a well-designed package that exudes the wow factor.

Now that you have these ecommerce packaging statistics, think of the further boost you’ll see with eco-friendly packaging. An ecommerce purchase that is not only aesthetically pleasing but also is sensitive to the earth is simply irresistible to the modern consumer.

Sustainable Packaging is Feasible

A few ecommerce businesses are already leading the charge in their packaging sustainability efforts. Curated theme box brand Man Crates, for example, delivers their crates sealed but otherwise bare. And cult beauty brand Lush has committed to using 100% recycled or recyclable materials to ship their online orders.

It’s probable that neither bare nor fully-sustainable shipments can be a reality for every online retailer, but every ecommerce business can take small steps toward a larger industry change. Pack-Spec and Green Apple are companies that we’ve mentioned in a related guide that provide eco-conscious branded packaging to give your online orders that extra pizzazz.

And Smithers Pira also recommended sustainable packaging tips for ecommerce sellers:

• Die-cut inserts, which hold products in place without plastic air pouches.
• Paper-based protection, which is recyclable.
• Mono-material packages, which make recycling easier.

The growing market of plastic alternatives is also driving the price of sustainable materials down. This means that there are cost effective, environmentally-friendly options that are also appealing to your customers.

Other Sustainable Practices

Online sellers looking to incorporate other sustainable practices have a multitude of options. Apparel e-tailers can offer discounts for customers who donate unwanted clothes, which was made popular by H&M’s in-store program. Lush, in further efforts to reduce its environmental impact, offers discounted product refills for customers who bring in the original containers.

Ecommerce sellers can also emulate Amazon’s minimal packaging program, where shoppers can request size-appropriate, plastic-free shipments. Allowing your customers to add comments to their orders is a simple addition to your checkout process that can help you collect feedback and suggestions along the way.

The growing green movement worldwide is a good thing. It’s also helping us better understand that one of the best ways to win over more customers and set your brand aside in the modern era is to be eco-friendly about the packaging that you are using.

There are a number of companies that offer affordable, custom-branded and eco-friendly packaging, like Pack-Spec and Woola. It’s a wonderful way to reduce your carbon footprint while being able to let your customers know that you are conscious of your impact on Mother Nature. It’s also a strong selling point for your brand, too.

To help you stay of ahead of the game, here are some ecommerce packaging tips that you can use to avoid common packaging mistakes while improving branding and reaping the rewards of better loyalty and retention.

If there is one area of ecommerce that totally nails the unboxing effect, it’s the popular subscription box services, which send predetermined items to a consumer on a renewing monthly cycle. We can all glean some packing tips for ecommerce from these trendsetting services providers.

Visits to subscription box websites grew by more than 3,000% between 2013 and 2016 – up from about 722,000 visits in 2013 to a whopping 21.4 million in 2016. On average, 37 million visitors come to these sites each month to purchase new products and get the same unboxing and customer service experience that other consumers have raved about.

Aside from offering a convenient deal-in-a-box with minimal hands-on effort required of the consumers, subscription box services cut their teeth on optimal packaging that’s easy to open and unbox and pleasing to the recipient because it leaves a positive, lasting impression.

A great example of excellent packaging in motion is provided by SALT, a subscription box social commerce experiment that encourages its users to help make the world a better place by learning how to be more proactive and sensitive to the environment. Note the appealing position of the interior contents of the box and the welcoming message and coy design that’s offered.

If you’re looking for more examples of how the unboxing effect can help you win over new customers, we’ve got you covered with this complete rundown on how you can use this phenomenon to take your packaging to the next level by thinking outside of the box. Remember, first impressions are everything. If shoppers are wowed when they receive their package, they’re more likely to buy from you again and tell others about, too.

How important is the unboxing effect in ecommerce?

New studies find that millions of hours worth of unboxing videos have been uploaded to YouTube since 2013, with an increase in search for the topic by more than 1,000%.  As of 2015, these unboxing videos have been watched more than 1.1 billion times, according to NY Times.

Not only does creating the unboxing or the un-bagging effect help you impress new purchasers of your product, but it has a far-reaching after-effect that results in increased brand awareness and invaluable word-of-mouth advertising that money is simply unable to buy.

Custom Packaging vs. Standard

By and far, you’ll realize greater retention when using custom packaging that accentuates your brand’s unique style, appeal and flare.

You’ve got a spread of choices you can consider for custom ecommerce packaging that can really make your products stand out. If cost is of issue, you’ve always got plenty of bargain options you can opt for with the USPS standard Priority Mail packaging, provided that your packages meet the size requirements, with newer options that let you get a discount on Priority Mail while using your own customize-branded boxes. You can also find affordable custom packaging from a wide variety of different services providers, each with their own assortment of choices.

How important is custom packaging to your brand?

According to a report by Shorr packaging, only 11% of consumers are impressed about the packaging they receive. With custom packaging, though, you have the potential to dazzle most recipients of your products, creating a lasting impression in their mind that drives home your brand’s namesake.

Consider this example from Brown Thomas (below) versus your standard USPS or Amazon box. The custom interior and gold lettering immediately evoke a mental response that’s pleasing to the recipient and that makes this package stand out.

You can take things a step further by including a “thank you” note for the consumers. Doing so, as the example below shows, can improve retention and generate new word-of-mouth sales, which Help Scout explains helps retain as much as 20% of your customers (which can represent as much as 80% of your reoccurring sales).

Another immediate benefit to using custom packaging is the viral social media sharing that can directly follow, which often leads to new customer acquisition and sales. A Packaging Digest report finds that when you make your packages look attractive, such as the example below depicts, there’s a 74% chance that this new purchase, and its packaging, will be shared on social media by the recipient.

Digital Coupons Are a Winning Strategy

Want more repeat sales from each order? Then you need to make sure you’re offering digital coupons to your loyal buyers by including them as packaging inserts with each custom box you ship. By the end of next year, more than 30 billion digital coupons will have been redeemed by consumers, with a projected 1.04 billion coupons being redeemed in 2019 overall.

How can digital coupons including in your packaging help generate new sales?

Current statistics find that they help improve brand awareness and loyalty by as much as 68% while generating sales uplift by as much as 48%, depending on the medium they’re advertised on.

One of the best ways to use digital coupons to generate new businesses is by including them as an insert in your ecommerce packaging. As our partner, Shopify, explains:

Packaging inserts can be low-cost: You don’t need to invest a lot to bring packaging inserts into the mix. Each of the examples below are low-cost but can yield high return. Inserts can be highly targeted: The recipient is already a customer, and you know what they bought. You can tailor your package insert to the exact person receiving it.

Take this example of Shea, a subscription box service that provides beauty related items and curated picks to its subscribers. Not only is their packaging helping to create the unboxing effect—which, as previously explained, comes with a myriad of immediate benefits—but notice how they’ve included a coupon code that’s good for a discount off the next purchase from them—typically redeemed by a family member or a close friend of the recipient—to also share in the savings, and to also generate new interest and increased sales uplift.

If you need some ecommerce packing tips on creating packaging inserts to showcase your digital coupons, look to this helpful guide by Sticker Mule. It will give you all the information you need to include this valuable, conversion-generating addition to your packaging scheme.

If you’re still wondering how digital coupons help your online store generate more repeat buyers while attracting new sales, we’ve got you covered in this related Guide.

Need Even More Tips?

Take a look at this illustrated infographic, courtesy of Shorr Packaging, to get even more tips on how you can make package that impresses your customers without breaking the bank. Want better relationships? Start your two-week free trial to ReadyCloud CRM today and start building them!