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Packaging
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Send the right message. Use packaging to market your company image
and service.
What and how you package your products is important as will signal
to your customers a message about you. Products carefully protected,
packaged with care, and neatly taped can promote more product
and service value. So what do you need to consider when sending
your products via the home delivery network? Will It Travel - Take into account the type of products which do and do not travel well via home delivery. Identify which products are unlikely to survive a home delivery and make the decision to keep or remove the products from your ecommerce store. Products like glass bottles, light bulbs etc may become problematic; no matter how well you protect them. Can You Protect It - For a product to endure the varied handling
without being damaged, the packaging needs to provide maximum
protection, e.g. airbags and/or bubble wrap. Secure It - Keep
your packaging secure by keeping the outer packaging plain, this
does not draw attention to what the product is. If you sell expensive
goods such as TV's, PC's etc, make sure the packaging is not attractive
to thieves. Although, it is known in the courier industry that
a branded TV box, for example, with just an address label is more
likely to be handled with care in the delivery network, than a
box covered with a plain outer bag. Only you can decide whether
you cover your high valued goods or not. Think About Gifts - Some home delivered products are intended as gifts, so try keeping the contents of the package a secret in case the intended recipient of the gift is at home at time of delivery. Therefore, keeping the outer box plain is not only good for security, but also helps to minimise disgruntled customers, especially around the holiday season. Promote Your Image - All successful companies take every opportunity to reflect their key messages to ensure a consistent customer experience. If that company is distance selling via the ecommerce the opportunity to do this becomes less and less. But packaging is a medium that can be used and one your company should not ignore. How your package is presented is vital - if a package arrives
dirty and scuffed this will reflect badly on your company's overall
brand. Balancing Act - Competing with your competitors shipping costs will be hard to start with. Especially if your a small business. The main reason for this is because many couriers only offer price reductions on guaranteed numbers you send out. However, some companies take the initiative and offer a competitive shipping price by balancing both courier and the Post Office. The principle works by charging a set fee for all standard deliveries, you make a loss on the courier costs, but make profit on the Post Office costs. Now you can compete with your competitors shipping costs. So when you make your product list take time to assign the product 'courier' or 'gpo'. If you end up with more 'gpo's' then loss of profit is low and so on... The only hassle you have is taking your packaged products to the Post Office for dispatching. (also see our Solving Fulfillment and Delivery page). Finally, be inventive, do the thinking for the customer. If you
are creating special or bundled products, try using presentation
packaging. Buy a weave basket for your bundled products; use ribbon,
purchase gift boxes, use tubes, buy printed polythene bags, provide
plastic cases, bottle boxes and even reusable fashion bags. Invoice/Receipt http://www.corrugated.org.uk
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