Retail Packaging Design: How to Stand Out in a Crowded Market

Your market is teeming with competitors, and they're all out to attract your audience to their products. What makes you stand out?

Without high-impact packaging design or product label design, you'll find it impossible to create an impression that lasts. Here are some things you should consider when thinking about your game plan.

Consumer Attention Spans Are Shrinking

Once, you only had to compete with a limited number of other brands, but today, you're locked in a constant battle for consumer attention. Between their favorite social media platforms and always-available smartphone apps, modern shoppers have plenty of distractions to surround themselves with. Even if you're one of the only players in your niche, you need custom retail packaging that makes people look up and take notice.

Brand Recognition Depends on Presence

Packaging helps you stand out by transforming your brand into a cohesive symbol. When confronted with many different visual elements at once, humans automatically pick out familiar shapes, colors and designs. By using your retail packaging to establish a consistent theme, you gain the power to jump to the forefront instantly and dominate people's focus.

The Power of Nuanced Design

You might think that any package will do as long as it contains and protects your products. Think again. Factors like color choices can impact the viability of packaging designs. For instance, one 2014 study showed that children were more likely to recognize brand names they associated with colorful packaging instead of designs that stuck to achromatic tones, or shades of gray.

Another study looked at how different packaging elements impacted consumers' willingness to purchase products like milk. In addition to basing their buying decisions on practical factors, such as whether the packages were easy to physically handle and store, consumers demonstrated preferences for attractive graphics, prominent nutritional information and familiar colors that they associated with dairy products. In short, your packaging has to tell a story about not only the product it contains but also your company and the experiences that consumers will get from using it.

Does Your Packaging Help Differentiate You?

Custom retail packaging comes in infinitely many varieties, so it's critical to choose elements that further your organizational mission. For instance, you might use limited-run packaging or seasonal designs to promote products associated with specific themes and sales campaigns. Or you could create packages that prominently display features you know your competitors lack.

Effective retail packaging design is an art form, but it also involves a lot of logical, strategic thought. To ensure that your consumer goods attract lasting attention in a crowded market, you'll need to engage in testing and refinement that take your understanding of what works beyond mere theory.

Working with a branding partner that can help you build a streamlined design, manufacturing, and deployment system is critical if you want the benefits of your packaging to last.