Shipping Supplies 1

As a business owner I know how important it is to make sure you give your customers the absolute best experience from start to finish as possible. Especially in a world where the attention span of the consumer is shrinking day by day and the number of competitive options is growing by tenfold. One bad experience on their end with your business, and you have very well and most likely lost them forever. This is especially true in the e-commerce business. You need to be able to grab the customer’s attention quickly, hold it long enough for them to do a cart checkout, and keep them from having buyer’s remorse. All the while trying to win their loyalty, so they’ll visit your site again and again. 

In trying to win over customer loyalty a lot of focus is put on the products you sell (which is a no brainer), the design of your website, the opt-in in order to get them on an email list so you can keep in touch, and (hopefully) customer service on the backend. All of these things are important as they all play a role in a positive customer experience. There is one thing, however, that tends to get overlooked, but if done correctly can be quite the eye catcher and brand builder. That is the shipping supplies you choose to use.

Now it might seem silly to think that the supplies you choose to ship out your products should be given your attention. But that just begs me then to ask the question… What is Tiffany’s known for? Why do girlfriends (or maybe some boyfriends) buy their boyfriends man crates? How do you know you’ve received an amazon order without even looking at what’s inside? It all comes back to what you use to ship out the product that customer has ordered. It’s a little thing, but it can have a big impact on your brand. Why just a plain old box with a label slapped on it, when you can use this as an opportunity to build brand awareness and loyalty? 

Granted, you don’t want to break your budget on the shipping supplies you choose to use. But high quality and fun packaging definitely can’t hurt. Plus, the better the quality and the more care given to how it’s shipped out, better guarantees the safety of the product, which therefore leads to a better customer experience. After all, no one is happy when you receive a package that’s been damaged while in route. Then it’s just an inconvenience for them to return it, and a hassle for you to have to replace their item, and potentially severing their return business in the future. 

So instead of overlooking this opportunity, I would encourage you, if you have boring old boxes and cheap tape and labels, to go back to the drawing board and see what you and your team can come up with in redesigning the way you ship things out and make this a brand building exercise. Because how cool would it be to someday have customers know who you are and what it is you do, simply by looking at nothing more than your box? If you’re wondering what they could be like maybe go, ask Tiffany’s. They know a thing or two about that.