3 Extras You Need to Throw in Your Ecommerce Boxes

People love free things. It’s a universal truth. Cheap food tastes better. Cheap games are more fun to play. Why? Because they didn’t cost a thing. You didn’t have to go out of your way to pay someone for a product, you just got it . . . for free. For nothing. Nothing to you.

When it comes to running your ecommerce company, you should make this one of your top priorities. Yes, it’ll cost you a little bit of extra time and packaging supplies to add things to your product boxes. But yes, it’ll also pay dividends down the road.

No matter if it’s cheap for you to throw in or saves your customer money, you have to be throwing extras in your boxes. It makes your customer feel special to receive something more than they bargained for. They feel like there is a lot of value in that box, more than they expected. They feel like you cared about them, and so they’ll want to show you in the future that they care about your company (by paying you more money). If utilizing your extent of packaging supplies to ramp up your box’s presentation, both inside and out, is too much for you, that says a lot about your business.

Here are a few essential ideas when it comes to ecommerce box extras to include in your product boxes.

Coupons.

Look, we know your customers will be saving a little extra on their next purchase. But you’re still selling products. They’ll be hooked and want to spend even more as they buy more and more of your stuff. Figure out a way to give them coupons during the holidays. During all of their purchases. During abandoned cart transactions. Just make this the number one thing you throw in their product box.

Hand-written letters.

They don’t have to be long and flourishing. They don’t have to be on super expensive material. They don’t even have to go in every single product you mail off. But if you do this for your new customers, they’ll remember it. They’ll remember that you wanted to do a little extra legwork to make them feel like a valued customer. And they’ll tell their friends about you. They’ll buy more things down the road. This small gesture will keep your business on the uprise.

Merch.

It doesn’t have to be hats or clothes, but writing utensils with your company name on them is still a freebie that your customers will be into. Stickers are something they can slap on their laptops, which is free advertising for your company. Even something like a mug with your company name on it during every holiday season to show your appreciation for them is a neat idea.

Did You Know Cardboard Could be Used as Art?

The other day I was at a festival downtown perusing the many different tents that had set up shop for the day. I had biscuits with mushroom gravy for the first time in my life (didn’t even know it existed before then, really). I visited an old garage that had been turned into rustic, artsy coffee shop.

It seemed like the place to find interesting and unique things like those I saw early in the day, so I explored some more and came across probably the coolest art I had seen in awhile.

It was cardboard art.

The artist seemed to have taken old cardboard boxes of various sizes and painted cartoonish art reminiscent of street graffiti on them. The style was very Invader Zim-esque, with a boxy style to the lines (this was probably intentional). Another unique feature of the art was the use of many “layers” to create a 3D effect. The main focus always protruded from the background layer.

I was almost tempted to buy a piece because of how unique it was. Everything was cleanly and professionally done. There were smaller pieces that could be hung in an apartment or larger pieces for basements and party rooms.

Perhaps the thing that interested me most, though, was how familiar the medium was. Packaging supplies like cardboard boxes boxes are everywhere in our daily lives, yet they seem to be something we overlook. They’re almost entirely made for function with no other use, yet the repurposing of them as art was just brilliant.

Maybe that was the message, though. We pass by so many things in our daily lives and don’t stop to register what it is we use all the time. Sometimes it’s the simplest things that are most brilliant. Pens, pencils, and markers, for instance, are essential to our lives, yet if we had no access to them but needed to write something down on paper, what would we use to write with instead?

There are many other packaging supplies we could think of that could be repurposed (even if it’s not art). Rubber bands are useful for hundreds of at-home needs. Bubble wrap is almost more of an entertainment than item for packaging and support. Packing tape is remembered more for its distinct sound when being unraveled than its actual use.

What other everyday items can you think of that elude your notice but are essential to productivity?

Designing Packages for Smaller Brands

Finding the right packaging supplies for your product really all boils down to marketing. Everything from the design of the package to logo design and even the color should really act as one big call to action that will entice consumers into picking your product over the competition.

This is why it is very important to invest in a packaging design that makes your product stand out in a unique way, and help grow the brand which will, in turn, lead to the product being more marketable and profitable. Here are a few tips for developing the right packaging concept to propel any product upward in the market.

The first thing to keep in mind is the package's function and form. Fundamentally, the function of a package is to keep the contents inside safe while the form should be something that roughly approximates the size of the product only a bit bigger. However, wrapping the product in a plain box with some bubble wrap inside will do nothing to help the marketability or increase the chances of a customer purchasing it. The package needs to provide customers with the product information while also looking like an attractive option. In other words, the packaging needs to be as minimalist as possible while still looking stylish and unique.

This leads to the next tip which is to be creative. There are all sorts of ways to market a product that are both unique and attractive. The last thing that any company owner wants is for their product to be perceived as cheap, tacky, or inferior just because the packaging was poorly designed. This is why it is important to invest in the design process and not necessarily just take the most economical choice.

While it is good to be creative, this can sometimes lead to some problems and leads to the next tip which is to stay as concise as possible. Consumers are bombarded with all sorts of marketing campaigns on a regular basis, and if something is ambiguous in terms of what the product or company is, then there is a good chance that they will pass it by. There is precious little time for a product to grab a customer's eye, and if they can't tell what they're looking at, then chances are they will simply pass it by.

The next tip has to do with where the product is being sold. Brick and mortar companies have a distinct advantage where the senses of touch and smell are concerned. Consumers simply cannot engage those sense when shopping online and as such the marketing scheme and packaging supplies used will have to take that into account. Of course, how the packaging and marketing would need to be modified between brick and mortar and an online environment will depend greatly on what the product is.

Above all else, the best way to come up with the right packaging design to boost brand name and growth will probably require some outside help. It can be enticing, especially for a smaller company with limited resources, to try to handle all the marketing in-house to keep costs low. On the other hand, risk tends to equal reward and shelling out the extra money for an advertising agency now can mean reaping big rewards in the future.