Today, we are living in an era of e-commerce and the way we shop, live and consume has thus changed significantly. E-commerce has benefited our customers much, but it has also unveiled some problems in product package design. These problems have not only hindered the improvement in commodity images but also the development of e-commerce. Therefore, we have to face these issues actively and solve them effectively.  

Then, how can we keep pace with the new packaging trends in the context of e-commerce? Here we mainly come to the following points. 

1. Personalization  

Package tends to be designed more human friendly and organically, endowed with personalized features and unique styles and thus engaging the consumers. Systematic thinking is required in package design so as to analyze the actual scenarios from different standings and perspectives and identify all considerations. Personalized packaging design is an extensively involved and influential approach of design, significantly associated with and having influence on corporate images, product itself and social effect.    

Examples are the Bucket Wine imitating the shape of the wine buckets, Peace Wine imitating the theatrical facial mask of the door-god in local folk dramas, Kaikouxiao Wine imitating the statute of MaitreyaBuddha smiling all the time, and other bionic personalized designs. These designs are unconventional with distinctive personalities and strong visual effects and therefore, they are easily attractive to and readily received by the consumers. 

2. Safety 

With regard to the general understanding to packaging, safety may be one of the most fundamental requirements for packaging. The earliest package came into being also for protecting the articles packaged inside, such as tree leaves, straw and other simple buffer materials. Taking pharmaceutical packaging as an example, foreign pharmaceutical package attaches high importance to children’s safety and resultantly, whether the package may pose threat to children’s safety or not will be taken into consideration in designing pharmaceutical package.

Recently, a company developed a pharmaceutical packing box named Faller. The box can be opened via the die line with a certain force, which is easy for the adults, but rather difficult for the children. As a result, this can prevent the box from being accidentally opened and the drugs inside from being mistakenly taken by the children. Moreover, once the box is opened, it is hard to get into its original shape, and consequently it can guard the drugs against any theft to certain extent, properly integrating its protection role with its anti-theft feature.  

3. Size Matters

Packaging size lays more emphasis on catering to the consumers’ demands and habits and adjusts flexibly according to the actual scenarios, which has become the new trend for packaging design. New packaging will be more open and diversified in dimension specifications, providing the consumers with different dimension solutions that are both diversified and take into account use experience by the consumers while perfectly aligning packaging size with the convenience and comfort under various application scenarios from the angles of the consumers.   

4. Anti-Fake

In the context of fast-growing modern technology, general anti-fake packaging technology no longer works with counterfeiters. It has become a powerful weapon to fight against counterfeiting by strengthening the visual effect of packaging design and packaging printing technology.  Paper with special texture, specialized dyestuff and packaging processes, such as holographic image, authentication sealing and bas-relief embossing can be used in packaging design to obtain specific effect so that the fake goods retreat due to high reproduction cost or poor effect. Therefore, it is a future development direction for the packaging industry to integrate the innovative methods in packaging design with hi-tech printing processes and pursue for unique originality and visual effect. 

5. Establish Information Hierarchy and Focal Design Element 

How to organize the information is a key factor for design. Broadly speaking, information hierarchy can be classified as brand, product, variety and benefit. In packaging design, product information to be conveyed must be analyzed and ranked according to their importance. 

If the design is to focus on product brand, consider adding brand slogans beside the brand trademark. However, it shall be noted that a brand slogan is not used just for one night but for a long time, as finding new inspiration often lead to interruption in design. Brand focal point can be strengthened by shapes, colors, illustrations and photos, but most importantly, the consumers can find the product quickly in their future shopping.

6. Minimal Principle—Show Me the Goods 

Less is more, and it is wisdom of communication. Verbal expression and visual effect shall remain succinct and ensure that the major visual implications on the package are readily understood and accepted by common consumers. Successful packaging design is just like dance with shackles, having certain freedom while being subject to certain rules. Generally, descriptions exceeding two or three aspects will have counter-productive effect, and excessive descriptions of merits will weaken core brand information, causing the consumers to lose interest in the product in shopping. 

In addition, it is almost always a wise choice to show the content inside by designing a transparent window on the package, as the consumers hope to have intuitive visual confirmation of the product. Besides, shapes, patterns, images and colors can communicate without resorting to any language. 

7. Customer Experience 

Online stores are not limited by time and place. Once the consumers develop favorable impression to the online stores, they are likely to become repeat customers and bring about influence to other online shoppers. To cultivate consumers’ favorable impression towards the online stores, packaging design plays a significant role. Therefore, to encourage repeated consumption by the consumers is very important to the business expansion of the online stores. For example, if a small thank card, discount card or welcome card is placed with the package, the consumers will feel warm and the impression to the stores and goods will also be strengthened. 

8. Conform to modern logistics and maintain eco-environment 

Logistics distribution is an important step for online shopping. Therefore, package for network goods shall bring its goods protection role into full play, conform to international standards on logistics packaging, and are available with all distinctive identifications so as to protect the goods, facilitate transportation and storage and promote the sales. Meanwhile, commodity packaging shall be made of returnable materials. Packaging materials shall be minimal, packaging design simple, printing process harmless and poison-free so as to reduce resources waste and environmental pollution due to package production.  

9. Packaging mobile-ution

The use of digital mobile phones and other modern technologies enables faster and more efficient information transmission and brand promotion through packaging design by virtue of the mobile phones and significantly enhances the intimate interaction between brand and consumers. For example, JohnnieWalker, the world’s largest whisky brand, launched its new hi-tech package for their BlueLableWhisky last year. An NFC (near-field communication) label is affixed on the wine bottle, and the consumers can obtain detailed information about the whisky just by keeping their mobile phone close to the bottle. 

As the e-commerce mechanism increasingly improves, this new shopping pattern will be readily accepted by more and more people and e-commerce packaging design will also receive more attention and flourish.