Factors to be considered when selecting right packaging material for Ecommerce
Factors to be considered when selecting right packaging material for Ecommerce.
There are various options for packaging material for orders for online store owners:- Corrugated Boxes
- Traditional Paper Envelopes
- Tamper Proof Poly Bags
- Protective or space filling packaging inside mainly bubble wrap
- Sealing Tape- Plain or Printed Tape
How to select the right packing material for your online store?
Selection of the appropriate packing material that suits the products is very important. Neither there is a clear choice of the right or wrong material, nor can we generalize the selection of proper packing material for all online stores. However one should consider following factors before selecting packing material for their products:
- Breakage/Damage Protection of Products:
If your product is likely to be broken or damaged in transit then surely you should consider strong outer layer plus powerful bubble filling inside. While watches, sunglasses etc should be properly bubble wrapped but there is no point in doing so for items like dress materials, saris etc.
- Theft Protection of Products:
Probability for existence of this factor prevails for most of the shipments. Store owners often receive complaints from customers receiving empty package or missing products.
- Weight of Packing Layer for Shipping Cost:
Courier charges are comparatively high in India. People avoid corrugated boxes since it adds to the overall weight of the shipment. Imagine a 0.45Kg product after packaging becomes a 1 kg then weight slab is changed and additional logistic charges of 40-50 INR are added.
- Presentation of shipment
Shipment is the only non-virtual and physical way by which your customer perceives your organization. For instance, if the shipment is clumsily stapled and traditionally wrapped with adhesive tape, it will certainly affect negatively even though it reached safe-unopened.
Presentation is undeniably the most important criteria that online store owners should consider while selecting packing material.
- Cost per shipment
With such a large number of sellers and growing competition in E-Commerce, store owners need to operate at thin margin than usual. In such time, store owners have to consider costing for packing per shipment. It has also got wide correlation with value of product.
- Branding preference
Branding and packaging runs on the parallel line for any E-Commerce. Competition is huge and buyers purchases from number of websites, few of them can’t even correlate which product was bought from which portal. It is trending, beneficial and important tool to print logo, name and other important details on the packing materials such as box, poly bags and tapes.
Those cute little bookmarks with each and every book order through Flipkart certainly helps in brand recall for any reader.
It costs nothing much compared to the marketing cost of the product. If you are selling on a marketplace then maybe you can’t use your branded material and you need to use plain material.
- Ease for packing and unpacking products
With growing number of orders, it is important to establish smooth packing system which ensures proper and easy packing. Similarly order should also be packed in such a way so that it gets easy for customer to open the item. No one likes to spend so much time for unwrapping a product.
- Time & Manpower required for packing a product
Packing isn’t the only task for store owners. If the item is promoted on deal then you need to pack 3000-5000 orders in a day. Marketplace comes up with shipping policy of 24 hours/48 hours etc, store owner need to ensure a fast and efficient packing system which requires minimum labour and maximum speed to pack the product. High number of labour for dispatching again adds to packing budget.
