As we covered in our guide to creating the perfect unboxing experience, if you can deliver the "wow factor" along with your parcel, it can leave a great impression on your customer, and give a valuable boost to your brand image. But once you've recognised that your packaging could do with a makeover, it can leave you with a quandary: how do you create a luxury vibe while sticking to a limited budget? Luckily with luxury branding, it's actually the little touches that can make all the difference. Make a few minor tweaks and thoughtful additions and the end results can be surprising: your bog standard package is transformed into something that's eye-catchingly upmarket. So with this in mind, let's take a look at how you can create a luxury feel for your packaging on a budget.
Package sizing: a great fit makes a lasting impression
You don't have to be a Savile Row tailor to recognise a really nice tailored suit when you see it. Everything about it is 'just right': from the way it sits on the wearer, right through to the quality of the stitch. With packaging, it's a very similar story. If it's too 'big and baggy', or too flimsy around the edges, then no matter how awesome your embellishments, you're always going to struggle to give your packaging a luxury feel. This is why, if a luxury unboxing experience is your end goal, you should always make sure that the basics are prioritised. Here are your essential areas to focus on:- Size: a snug fit always works best. In other words, a box or mailer envelope that's large enough to house your item comfortably without leaving your customer with a needlessly large volume of filler or outer wrap to contend with.
- Security: torn boxes, dog-eared corners, punctured envelopes, and of course, transit-damaged products: all of this can undo your luxury branding efforts at a stroke. Always ensure that your packaging is strong enough to protect your product's vulnerabilities. As an example, for delicate or heavier items, corrugated double-wall cardboard boxes are often a useful starting point.
If you make sure that these two areas are covered, it gives you the ideal foundations for adding some further luxury touches to your packaging.
Putting colour to work
We recently designed postal packaging for the online retailers, Drop Dead Clothing. Striking yet simple, the stylish black-on-red design is one of the standout features of Drop Dead's new packaging. It helps to illustrate how e-sellers of all types can use colour to create their very own 'boutique' feel. Here are some of our top tips for using colour:- Match your box colours to your brand colours: if your website, your social media profile banners and your packaging all have the same look and feel, it can help to give an established, upmarket, consistent vibe to your business.
- Use colour fillers for contrast: as an alternative to two-tone boxes, you could aim for a similar effect through your choice of biodegradable filling material (e.g. a plain black box contrasted against bright red filler).
- Create the right customer mindset: the nature of the product can help you define the right look and feel for your luxury packaging and your choice of colours can help you a lot here. Examples include the use of rustic browns/oranges for handmade crafts, green and blue to give your health and beauty products a freshness vibe or rich gold and reds for a sense of traditional luxury.
Add a personal touch
Bog-standard packaging is functional: it gets your items from A to B in one piece. Get it right, and a luxury unboxing experience should go way beyond this. It delights your customer, giving them something extra that they weren't expecting. Package inserts offer one of the most cost-effective ways of achieving thisand they don't have to involve a massive outlay on your part. A thank-you card, free gift, tester sample, money-off voucher: any or all of these can be a useful way of reminding customers that they have made the right choice.