9 Tips to Creating the Perfect Unboxing Experience

An exceptional unboxing experience delivers significant benefits for your company, from delighting customers and reinforcing your brand image to word-of-mouth marketing and social engagement. If you sell retail products, carefully crafting your unboxing experience can pay huge dividends.

Here are nine actionable tips for brands looking to create an unforgettable unboxing experience.

1. Know Your Audience

Understand your target market and what will resonate with them during unboxing. Know their values and emotional triggers so you can incorporate thoughtful touches.

For example:

• If your audience values sustainability, you can use eco-friendly folding cartons
• … and print recycling symbols or phrases such as “made from 80% post-consumer recycled content”
• If your products are for adults, you might opt for the classy elegance of neutral colors
• If your products are for children, you might go with bright, vibrant colors and fun designs

2. Design with Purpose

Design your unboxing experience with purpose, from the exterior carton to interior trays, dividers, inserts, and even paper fillers. Ensure every component – colors, messaging, structure, texture, and finish – contributes to the experience you want to create.

Answer these questions as you plan your design:

• What are your brand values?
• What are your customers’ values?
• What do you want to convey?
• How will you tell your brand story?
• What emotions do you want to elicit?
• How will you achieve a perception of quality?

3. Consider Giftability

The more giftable your product is, the more likely you’ll earn sales for special occasions such as holidays and birthdays. Here are some tips:

• Remove the “bad part” about receiving a gift: It’s frustrating to need scissors to open packaging, so make your box easy to open
• Simplify assembly: If your products require assembly, design your packaging so that each part is unboxed in an intuitive sequence
• Create a perception of quality: Great design, finishes such as embossing and soft-touch coatings, neat organization, and sturdy cartons all lend to perception of quality
• Make it reusable: Think about ways your packaging can be repurposed after unboxing. For example, a folding carton might make a great pencil box – a gift that keeps on giving and promotes your brand for years

4. Employ Quality Materials and Finishes

Consider how every part of your packaging – exterior and interior – will look and feel during the unboxing experience.

• Visual appeal: Gloss or matte finishes display differently under light
• Tactile: Soft-touch coatings lend a sense of luxury
• Materials: Coated Natural Kraft (CNK) suggests sustainability, while Solid Bleached Sulfate (SBS) might appear more cutting-edge

5. Don’t Forget Interior Packaging

Interior packaging presents an excellent opportunity to delight customers with fun surprises.

For example, you can:

• Insert highly personalized handwritten notes
• Personalize inserts for personas rather than individuals – sustainability messaging still speaks to each customer
• Print a tailored quote on the inside cover of a box so it’s not revealed until unboxing

6. Organization and Unboxing Sequence

Don’t overlook the value of neat organization and a strategic unboxing sequence. Rather than just toss everything together in Styrofoam popcorn, delight customers and simplify unboxing by:

• Making it intuitive and removing all unboxing pains (no scissors required)
• Simplifying assembly – removing parts as needed and including printed or QR code instructions
• An intuitive presentation – products neatly organized in a paper tray with dividers, for example

7. Incorporate Digital Elements

Smart packaging can truly differentiate your brand and help you create an unforgettable unboxing experience. For example, you can:

• Print QR codes on your packaging
• Create an AR experience for your customers
• Add social media calls to action

The idea is to craft a unique experience that seamlessly bridges the offline and online worlds for your customers.

8. Test and Refine

We always test our packaging and refine it as needed according to feedback, and we recommend you do the same. For example, we provide value-added mockups so our customers can see and feel folding cartons from a functional perspective before going to production.

Test your unboxing experience with real customers. Get their feedback and incorporate it into revised designs to ensure you’re meeting – and exceeding – their expectations.

9. Capture and Share Your Unboxing Experience

Social engagement is a great way to get more out of your unboxing experience. Ideas include:

• Creating your own unboxing videos. Many brands share their own videos on social media
• Encouraging customers to create and share their own videos (you could make it a contest with a chance to win a prize)
• Working directly with influencers to make unboxing videos and promote your products to their followers

A well-crafted unboxing experience is a powerful tool to build brand loyalty, improve customer retention, attract new customers, and ultimately boost ROI. We can help. As your packaging partner, our experts can guide you through the various options to make your packaging unique so you can deliver an unforgettable unboxing experience for your customers.