How to package and send your orders

The way you package your orders impacts nearly every aspect of the customer experience. You need durable packaging to ensure your products are delivered in great shape, visually appealing boxes to represent your brand, and sustainable options as well to meet changing customer demand.

We’ve put a guide together to help you choose the best possible packaging options for your products and your customers so they’re even more excited when one of your boxes lands on their doorstep.

Table of contents

• Why packaging is an important part of the customer experience
• Choosing the box
• Packing your box
• Seal your box securely
• Packaging labels for boxes
• Other considerations when packaging your orders
• Prepare for returns
  

Choosing the box

There are a few criteria to keep in mind when choosing the best box for shipping and packaging your products. They are:

Sizing

Choosing a box that’s too small or fits tight around the item you’re shipping not only doesn’t look right, it also makes the enclosed products more susceptible to damage as they don’t provide any protection from impacts.

On the other hand, a box that’s too large and isn’t padded can let items move around too much, or collapse when stacked with other boxes.

Durability

You’ll want to use strong boxes that can handle passing through all stages of your delivery process and stand up to any accidental knocks.

Heavy products need to be in corrugated cardboard boxes with flaps that are completely intact and taped up well.

While it can be tempting to reuse boxes, check to see if they’ve been compromised in any way first.

Packing your box

When a box leaves your store or warehouse, its journey is going to see it passed through many sets of hands, and potentially through conveyor belts, on to planes and in the back of a van. This varied jostling and movement can damage the products inside if they’re not packaged properly. Some common types of packaging materials to keep goods safe include:

• Foam peanuts
• Bubble wrap
• Shredded paper
• Styrofoam
  
  

However, you don’t have to use these traditional options just because everyone else does. Your packaging is the first thing your customer sees and touches after they’ve made their purchase and it can say a lot about what you value as a brand. Packaging your orders sustainably shows your customer you care about the environment.

Try to use as little packaging as possible, make sure it fits so you’re not wasting space and materials, and use recycled materials whenever you can. Better Packaging Co.’s new world first POLLAST!C mailing satchels are a great example. They’re made from 100% ocean bound plastic pollution, so using their packaging is kinda like commissioning a beach cleanup!

Once you’ve chosen a supporting packaging material, you then need to take the following steps:

• If multiple items are going in the same box, wrap each one individually.
• Ensure there’s enough packaging material between them that they won’t damage each other.
• Cover any sharp edges with extra packaging.
• Keep heavy items locked in place in the box with supporting packaging materials.
• Maintain an even space between items and the walls of the box.
  

Packaging labels for boxes

The icing on the cake if you will, the packaging labels are essential for your products arriving at their intended destination in a timely manner.

Any oversights here, such as not including a contact number for the recipient or having an address autofill incorrectly can really have a negative impact on the customer experience. It can also impact your bottom line, as some couriers will charge penalty rates for incorrect addresses.

As your business scales up, it’s no longer feasible to be manually typing shipping addresses out to go on your packaging labels. Starshipit can help you generate accurate shipping labels that will then be sent straight to your thermal printer or saved as a PDF so you can bulk print labels later.

If you’re using a barcode scanner, simply scanning the packaging slip will automatically print a label. We can help you greatly simplify this process while maintaining the accuracy that’s so essential to it.

Other steps you should take to ensure your package is properly labeled include:

• Keep the address visible - Place the label on the top of the package and not around any corners.
• Remove old labels and stickers - If you’re reusing a box, old labels can be confusing to couriers and impact the shipping process.
• Put a copy of the address label in the package itself - If the exterior of the box is damaged or the external label isn’t attached correctly, this way you still have a backup.
• Consider a window pouch - These are great for protecting the delivery labels and any other paperwork being sent with the delivery.
  
  

Automated shipping solutions can prove useful here, ensuring all shipping information is included on your labels - not to mention auto-correcting any invalid addresses.

Other considerations when packaging your orders

All these helpful tips we’ve given you don’t quite mean you’re ready to throw any old item in a box and send it on its way. Depending on what your customers are ordering and what you sell, there are a few other considerations to keep in mind.

The big one is dangerous goods. If you’re sending items that contain batteries or other common dangerous goods like aerosols, you need to check the guidelines for each courier service you use. Some will require very specific dangerous goods codes on the boxes, so in the event of an incident someone can identify what’s in the boxes and how to mitigate any damage. They may also have different weight limits for these items, or may refuse them entirely. Make sure you’ve checked with your courier before offering them for shipping to customers.

Prepare for returns

In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to worry about customers returning a package. But whether someone’s ordered the wrong size, or there’s been a mix up on their order, offering an efficient returns process is an important way to improve a customer’s experience. Shopify found that 92% of people who make a return will shop with a retailer again if they can offer a good returns experience.

Starshipit can help you offer a branded returns process to make things super simple for you and your customers. Customers can use a returns portal to generate their own return label and easily ship the parcel back to you for correcting.