Questions Answered

3 Lessons learned from sending thousands of parcels

By Liam Mitchell Norris | 21 February 2017

This article is the 3rd in our E-Sellers Guide, covering the delivery stage of your goods in the customer journey. If you’d like a more in-depth look at the overall experience, you can get the E-Sellers guide here, it completely free to download! For now though, what are the three biggest areas you need to focus on in your business regarding the delivery of the package? This is an area that is regularly overlooked.

Of course security of the product is paramount, but there is still an opportunity there to connect your customers with your brand image, as the products they’ve ordered off you arrive! Three main points that will be covered are…
  1. Right packaging to match the right product
  2. Making your packaging look great
  3. Ease of opening the package
 

Right packaging to match the right product

Choosing the right packaging to protect your products in transportation is vital. Not just from getting damaged, as it gets thrown around in the courier van, but also from theft and the environment. Choosing the right amount of protection for your packaging so you can recognise if someone has tried to tamper with the parcel. Products like Courier Bags have tamper evident seals, so you can tell when you get your package if someone has interfered with it or not.

The second main point people most often overlook is the environment I.e. rain destroying parcels and damaging the transported product. Cardboard boxes can sometimes be destroyed in wet weather conditions, whereas courier bags are sealed and doesn’t matter how wet they get.

Take a look at the following tables, to help get an idea of what sort of protective packaging you need to protect certain types of goods!






 

Making Your Packaging Look Great

Keeping the package protected is only half the job, the other half is the look and feel of the delivery your customer receives. A great way to enhance this part of your package is to get your logo printed on it; this helps to reinforce your brand and its messages all the way to the end.



Printing on Courier Bags for example can be quite cost effective, depending on size and quantity that you’re getting; it can be well under a $1 a bag to get printing done. You can check out the variety of different options here.

With your brands logo and message printed on the package it helps enhance your customer’s post-purchase experience. You want to make them feel a connection with your brand, which is the whole point of this exercise!

Courier bags are extremely versatile as you can see above with the range of different products they can package. However they’re also extremely durable, as the video below displays.

 

 

Make Opening the package EASY and SIMPLE!

Another point that isn’t usually touched on, is easy removal of the product your client has purchased, from its package. Although seems quite obvious, it can be overlooked (seriously, who enjoys opening plastic moulds…especially when there’s no scissors around and you’re straining to get the damn package open!).

If you’re sending items in a box/carton, don’t overdo it on the tape or strapping (unless it’s precious cargo that needs extra security). It can be annoying to cut through 4 layers of different wrapping and packaging material.


Other tips that are also covered in the guide in regards to the packaging are safety, uniqueness / visual impact and chucking “extras” in with the package, which is rare to see, but can have a big benefits!

In the next blog in this series we’ll talk about the communication of the delivery and complaint management, which are two extremely important parts of the overall customer experience. Alternatively if you’d like to dive straight in and go further in-depth with what we’ve covered above you can get the E-Sellers guide for free right here, otherwise we’ll talk next time!