Why is packaging design important?
A package not understood will never be bought. On average the consumer spends only a few seconds to choose a product in a supermarket. If your product doesn’t get understood in that time, it’ll be left on the shelf. It’s important to make sure that the product package communicates the right things.
Only one or two of the most important messages are possible to clearly communicate in your package. If you focus on too many things at once, none of them get noticed and the consumer will be left confused. Images are easier to intuitively understand than text. Colours create associations whether you want it or not.
If you choose unusual colour coding or messages for your category, you should also reserve a bigger than usual budget for marketing. When a package communicates non-familiar things, you need to prepare to teach the meaning of the messages yourself.
It is especially important to focus on the messages, when the contents of the package are not yet familiar to the customer.
When you create many variants to the same product range, please make the choice easy for the customer by clearly differentiating them from one another.
If you make big changes to a familiar package, it’s good to use marketing resources to make the new outlook known. It’s also often a good idea to re-design market leaders’ packages step-by-step, to not lose already existing customers.
When differentiating the products from one another is difficult, the product will be left untouched.
