If you spend a lot of time online, you may enjoy memes of embarrassing mistakes that people have made. While that’s mostly harmless, the joke will be far less funny when it’s your products or packaging that others start making fun of. Apart from hurting your company’s image, bad packaging and product packaging mistakes may lead to reduced sales and revenue, affecting your profit margin.
It’s important to understand that your customers’ way of thinking may be affected simply by looking at your product packaging. For instance, a substandard packaging design may stimulate the areas of the brain associated with negative emotions.
For that reason, you should care a lot more about your packaging design.
The design of your product packaging will create a bridge between your clients and the items you’re offering. Potential clients will see and touch your packaging even before they interact with your product. You might be selling an incredible item, but you should know that the packaging will either make or break all of your marketing efforts.
What Are The Benefits Of Packaging?
There are several advantages of ensuring that you have excellent packaging, including the following:
- It protects the product: Proper wrapping will safeguard the product from elements such as water, dirt, and dust. It’ll be responsible for keeping the product intact when it’s delivered from the store to the consumer. Thus, the packaging should be long-lasting, durable, and dependable.
- It can attract buyers: Among the primary goals of packaging is to attract potential customers and convince them to buy your products. As first impressions play a big role in the purchasing process, well-designed, eco friendly packaging may help get your products into the hands of prospective customers.
- It can be used to provide details about the item: Displaying crucial product information may help in managing customer expectations and boosting customer satisfaction. But while you have to ensure that everyone who buys your product knows what they’re purchasing, avoid unnecessarily lengthy descriptions and let the product speak for itself.
- It’ll highlight your product: Product packaging involves using strategic methods to get the attention of every person who sees or encounters your product. While the size and shape of your packaging may be similar to that of the competitor, its design should be distinctive. The way your packaged product looks will set it apart from the competition, which may just result in higher sales over time.
What Are The Product Packaging Mistakes To Avoid?
The following are some of the errors you should steer clear of if you want your packaging to work for and not against you:
- Excessive Packaging
In most cases, this will fail to add value to the customer experience. Instead, it’ll not only waste your hard-earned money, time, and materials but also potentially reduce the quality of consumers’ unboxing experience. It’s a must to ensure that every packaging component takes your customer deeper into your brand’s journey, leaving them with an unforgettable encounter that exceeds all of their expectations.
Too much packaging that serves no practical or aesthetic purpose may lead to restlessness and frustration on the part of the customer. Apart from that, excessive packaging may tarnish your brand’s image due to the unnecessary waste it produces. Keep in mind that nowadays, most individuals are aware of the importance of conserving the environment and prefer companies that don’t contribute to the growing pollution problem. Thus, overpackaging may affect your reputation, leading to lower sales and fewer customers.
- Misrepresentation
Some brands may use packaging that gives off the impression that the product inside offers more than what it actually does. While this may be effective in generating quick sales, it’ll negatively affect your brand’s image in the long run.
Deceiving potential customers, such as with shrinkflation, is one of the surefire ways to lose their trust in your business. And without that trust, there’s zero chance that they’ll purchase from you again. What’s more, you can be condemned both online and offline for deceptive packaging.
It’s therefore important to avoid using packaging that makes your product look bigger than it is or a description that promises something the product can’t deliver. Although it may be tempting to exaggerate certain aspects of your product for the sake of selling more, any kind of trickery is always a bad idea.
- Impossible-To-Open Packaging
You may have already encountered this yourself. Some types of packaging end up being annoyingly difficult to open, forcing you to use a sharp knife or a pair of scissors. And even with those tools, it might still be a challenge to get the product out of its container.
In some cases, the customer will give up and deal with the time-consuming process of unboxing another day. As a business owner, you don’t want that to happen. Your customer should be able to unwrap their latest purchase and use it right away instead of wondering whether they should get a chainsaw to open it (not really, but you understand the point).
While your marketing team may be adept at coming up with engaging slogans, it’s pretty clear that nobody enjoys the frustration that comes with unboxing a complicated package. Make it easy for your customers to open your products, and you’ll improve their experience and give them more reason to keep buying from you.
- Wrong Labeling
Typos, misspellings, and controversial designs may leave potential clients wondering about your brand’s professionalism. The sad part is that it may be impossible to recall the product once the packaging error is out in the world. Especially during this smartphone era, pictures of your mistake will likely circulate over the internet like wildfire, making it hard for you to rectify the damage.
Before releasing your product, see to it that you conduct a thorough inspection of the packaging to find out if there’s an error anywhere on it. Any product with the wrong description or other types of errors should be sent back so you can protect your brand’s image.
- Inconsistent White Spaces
When used well, white space will help you produce a well-balanced look for the package. The neutral contrast created by strategically placed white spaces on the wrapping will make your branding message stand out without overwhelming the consumer. You should move away from having a riot of hues to make communicating your message to potential customers much easier.
Product Packaging Mistakes in Conclusion
The role of packaging is to capture the attention of potential customers. For this reason, ensure that your design is different from that of rival brands, and be as honest as possible about the images and information you include in your packaging.
What’s more, use the right amount of eco-friendly materials to wrap your products to avoid impacting the already deteriorating environment.