Summary: how to create good packaging for an e-commerce brand
Good packaging begins with a strategic analysis: target market, positioning, competition, existing branding. Design comes last, never first. Wiiv's method, a strategic branding and packaging agency based in Paris and operating in Bordeaux, Lyon, and Milan, involves verifying the coherence of the brand strategy, defining a packaging strategy adapted to current and future ranges, analyzing competition on the shelf, formulating the packaging promise, designing the UX from discovery to unboxing, then presenting up to 3 visual options in context before any production launch. This method applies to the food, cosmetics, fashion, lifestyle, and wine and spirits sectors.
How to create good packaging: the Wiiv method
Most brands do their packaging in the wrong order. They first choose colors, call a graphic designer, approve a visual they like, and send it to print. A few months later, sales don't take off. The product is good. The packaging isn't doing its job.
Failed packaging isn't always visible in the design. It's visible in sales, in the repurchase rate, in how distributors react, in how buyers perceive the price. These signals often arrive too late, after a first print run has been paid for and distributed.
What we'll show in this article is how to approach a packaging project in the right order. Not the order that starts with design. The order that starts with strategy, understands the market, defines the promise, and arrives at design with enough information so that every visual decision is justified.
"Packaging is often a product brand's longest-term investment. You order a stock, you sell it over several months, sometimes more than a year. If the packaging doesn't work, you live with the consequences for a long time. That's why we refuse to start with design."
Philippe, co-founder of Wiiv
Step 1: Verify the strategy before touching the design
The first thing we do at Wiiv before any packaging project is not to look at the founder's visual references or open design software. It's to verify the strategy.
Three elements to prioritize: the definition of the target market and its real-world situation, the state of current branding and its coherence with commercial objectives, and the brand's competitive position. This preliminary diagnosis takes time. It is non-negotiable.
Why? Because packaging is an investment linked to stock. Unlike a social media post that can be corrected in a few hours, printed packaging represents several thousand euros tied up and several months of market exposure. Going in the wrong direction is expensive, and warning signs always arrive too late if this preliminary work hasn't been done.
This diagnosis is also an opportunity to verify that the brand's branding is still consistent with its current objectives. Brands evolve. The target changes, positioning becomes more precise, prices move upmarket. But the branding often remains fixed to what it was at launch. The moment to create or redesign packaging is the right time to ask this question: does our brand identity still reflect who we are today?
Step 2: Define a packaging strategy, not just a packaging
Packaging is not created in isolation. It is part of a broader packaging strategy that takes into account not only the current product but also the future range.
What we build at this stage: a strategic framework that determines how the packaging will evolve. If you launch today with a single SKU but plan to have five in eighteen months, the packaging of the first product must already anticipate the visual system of the entire range. Colors, typography, face structure: everything must be adaptable without breaking identity when new references arrive.
Not planning for this extensibility from the start is the most common and most costly mistake. It necessitates a partial or total redesign when the range expands, often at the worst financial moment. Well-designed packaging from the outset creates a system that grows with the brand.
The packaging strategy also covers the consistency between primary packaging (what directly touches the product) and secondary packaging (box, case, shipping bag). These two levels tell the same story or create a dissonance that the buyer perceives immediately.
Step 3: Analyze the competition on the shelf before creating anything
Analyzing competitor packaging is not about looking for inspiration. It's about understanding what absolutely not to reproduce.
The most frequent mistake we observe, across all sectors, is copying the visual codes of the market. The result is predictable: everyone ends up looking alike, shelves become unreadable, and the buyer decides based on price because they have no other differentiation criterion. This is not inevitable. It's the consequence of a lack of upstream analysis.
What we look for in a competitive packaging analysis: identifying saturated codes (those everyone uses and which no longer differentiate), emerging codes (those that are rising and will become saturated in eighteen months), and free spaces (visual territories that no one yet occupies). These free spaces are real differentiation opportunities.
We analyze both the physical and digital shelf. On an e-commerce product page, packaging is reduced to a thumbnail of a few centimeters. Fine details disappear. What remains is the silhouette, the dominant color, and the contrast. Packaging that works on a physical shelf might be invisible as a thumbnail. Competitive analysis must integrate both contexts.
"When we worked with KERA, a premium caffeinated beverage brand, we decided to break the codes of the sector. Designing with market codes would have made it invisible on the shelf because, in theory, it would have been canonical and original, but on the shelf, it would have been completely lost among other packaging. We proposed a radically different direction, which completely stood out from the market. The founders took the risk, trusted us, and today, it's precisely this packaging that gets people talking."
Cynthia, co-founder of Wiiv
Step 4: Challenge the founder's beliefs before validating them
This is the most delicate and valuable step. It consists of confronting the founder's vision with market reality, and identifying where the two diverge.
Most founders arrive with a vision for their packaging built on their personal taste, on what they've seen in their sector, or on what they think their target wants. These three sources are often biased. Personal taste doesn't always align with the codes the target reads. What's been seen in the sector is often what should be avoided. And what one thinks the target wants isn't always what they actually buy.
The role of a strategic agency is not to validate what the founder thinks. It's to confront it with what the market shows. Sometimes, the founder's vision is correct, and the analysis confirms it. Sometimes, it's wrong, and the analysis proves it. In both cases, the founder leaves with a decision rooted in objective reality, not in intuition.
At Wiiv, if we think the envisioned direction isn't right, we say so. We don't impose. But we inform. Because a client who goes in the wrong direction with our files is a client who comes back six months later with a problem we could have avoided together.
Step 5: Define the packaging promise
Before opening any design software, the packaging promise must be formulated in writing. This is the phrase, sometimes two, that states what this product offers to the buyer. Not what it contains. Not how it's made. What it changes.
This promise determines the hierarchy of information on all faces. What needs to stand out in one second (the main promise), what comes in a second reading (the arguments), what to look for if one wants to go further (the details). Effective packaging doesn't give all the information at once. It sequences it.
The most common mistake at this stage: replacing the promise with a list of ingredients or a technical description of the product. This information has its place, but it doesn't trigger a purchase. What triggers a purchase is the immediate answer to the question the buyer asks themselves in less than two seconds: is this product for me?
Step 6: Understand the visual codes of the sector to better reinterpret them
Each sector has its visual codes. Implicit conventions that buyers have integrated unconsciously, and which immediately signal a product's category, positioning, and price segment.
In cosmetics, premium codes are not the same as natural codes, which are not the same as clinical codes. In food, artisanal codes are not the same as mass market codes. In wines, the codes of a traditional estate are not the same as the codes of a modern cuvée aimed at new buyers.
Knowing these codes serves two purposes. First, to be legible: if a product does not respect any of its category's codes, the buyer doesn't know how to read it and moves on. Second, to differentiate: once the codes are mastered, one can decide which ones to respect, which ones to slightly shift, and which ones to deliberately transgress to create a memorable break.
The most frequent misstep is not transgressing codes. It's transgressing them without having understood them. Packaging that breaks its sector's codes because the founder didn't know them isn't original. It's illegible. Packaging that transgresses them with method and intention, on the other hand, can create lasting differentiation.
Step 7: Design the main face
The main face has one single role: to capture attention, signal the category, and trigger the desire to approach. Not to sell. Not to convince. Just to stop the buyer in their tracks.
It has less than two seconds to do so. In this short time, the buyer perceives the dominant color, the general silhouette, the price signal, and the main promise if it is sufficiently visible. That's all. Anything outside these elements will not be perceived at this stage.
The counter-intuitive decision we most often recommend: put less information on the main face, not more. A founder's natural reflex is to want to explain everything on the main face, to "miss nothing." The result is packaging that says too many things at once and therefore says nothing clearly. A strong main face is one that makes a single choice and owns it.
Another counter-intuitive piece of advice: don't put the logo first. It's the promise that should stand out at first glance, not the brand name. A buyer who doesn't yet know the brand is not stopped by a name. They are stopped by what the product promises them.
Step 8: Design the secondary faces
The secondary faces take over once the main face has done its job: it has captured attention and made the buyer want to approach. The buyer turns the product over, rotates it, and looks for the information they need to make their decision.
On the secondary faces, the objective changes. It's no longer about capturing, but about convincing, reassuring, and justifying the price. This is where arguments are developed, purchasing obstacles are removed, and trust is built. The reading hierarchy on these faces is a strategic task in itself.
Mandatory mentions, ingredients, content, dates, labels, barcodes, must be integrated without degrading this legibility. This is not an insoluble problem, but it is a problem that cannot be solved in post-production when the design is already locked. It must be anticipated from the brief, by knowing the complete list of mandatory mentions before starting to design.
Step 9: Think about packaging UX from discovery to unboxing
Packaging is not a static object. It's a sequential experience. The buyer discovers it from afar, approaches, picks it up, turns it over, opens it. Something happens at each stage. And each of these stages can strengthen or weaken the purchasing decision and post-purchase satisfaction.
Unboxing is the most underestimated moment. The buyer has paid. The promise must be kept. What they discover upon opening – the perceived quality of the materials, how the product is presented, the details that show they were thought of – builds immediate satisfaction and the likelihood of repurchase. Packaging that disappoints upon opening produces the opposite effect of what all previous work has built.
E-commerce amplifies the importance of this moment. For a brand selling online, opening the package is the buyer's first physical contact with the brand. Before that, everything was digital: product sheet photo, sales page, order confirmation. The package is reality.
What we observe among e-commerce brands is a tendency to underestimate this step. Packaging is treated as a logistical constraint rather than a sales and satisfaction tool. This is a costly mistake. A buyer who receives a package that breaks the brand dynamic, that doesn't match what they saw online, that feels like an afterthought, does not share their experience positively. They don't return, or return less. A buyer who receives a package that keeps the brand's visual and emotional promise shares, recommends, returns.
"We have a fashion client who told us that her customer reviews consistently mentioned the packaging. Not the garment first. The packaging. The reception experience had created such a positive emotional context that it colored the perception of the product itself. That's the power of packaging that truly does its job."
Cynthia, co-founder of Wiiv
Step 10: Present up to 3 visual options in context
At Wiiv, we don't present a flat design in a technical file. We present creative directions in a real context: 3D mockups, shelf placements, e-commerce flat lays, unboxing visuals. Up to 3 different options depending on the offering, so that validation is rooted in a perceptible reality.
A flat technical file is essential for production. It is useless for validating a design decision. No one can mentally visualize what a 3D package will look like from a template PDF. Legibility problems, composition imbalances, hierarchy inconsistencies: they only appear in context.
Presenting the options in context changes the nature of the validation. The founder no longer validates a file. They validate a brand experience. They see their product on the shelf next to the competition. They see what their buyer will perceive first. They can make an informed decision, not a decision based on imagination.
It is also at this stage that necessary adjustments are identified before production. An illegible detail at a small size, a color that does not behave as expected on the material, an information hierarchy that does not work as expected in context. These corrections made before printing cost nothing. Made afterward, they cost a print run.
Step 11: Prepare technical files for printing
Once the design has been validated in context, the preparation of technical files is the step that ensures what has been designed will be correctly reproduced in print.
What this preparation covers: file standardization (bleeds, crop marks, CMYK color profiles), resolution verification, and preparation of the technical specifications transmitted to the printer. These technical elements are not optional. A poorly prepared file produces print results that do not match the validated design.
What Wiiv does at this stage: we prepare the files and the specifications. We do not manage printing or physical production. This is a deliberate choice. Our added value is in strategy and design, not in printer relationships. However, we work with carefully selected production partners on the ground whom we can recommend according to the client's sector, volumes, and budget constraints.
The most frequent packaging missteps, sector by sector
Food and beverages
The most common misstep in food is to copy the codes of sector leaders. A founder looks at the brands dominating the shelves and thinks that resembling them will lend credibility to their own. It's the opposite. Leaders have the budgets to impose their codes. Challenger brands need to occupy territories that leaders do not. Blending into their aesthetic means becoming invisible next to them.
The other frequent misstep: integrating mandatory mentions at the last minute, after the design is locked. In food, these mentions are numerous and regulated. Integrating them in post-production creates visual imbalances and legibility problems that cannot be properly corrected without redoing the entire design.
Cosmetics and beauty
In cosmetics, the classic misstep is to misread the codes of one's segment and create a dissonance between the announced positioning and the projected visual identity. A natural brand adopting clinical codes, a premium brand sliding towards overly accessible codes: the buyer perceives this inconsistency without being able to name it, and it discourages them from buying.
The second misstep: sticking to a history that is no longer relevant. Many cosmetic brands have packaging that dates from their launch, which reflected the founder's vision at that time, and which has never been questioned even if the brand, its target, and its market have evolved. Cosmetic packaging ages quickly. Not updating it regularly means speaking to a target that is no longer quite the same.
Fashion and lifestyle
In fashion, the most common mistake is to treat labels, hangtags, and shipping packaging as separate, unconnected elements. The result: brand inconsistency at every touchpoint, which buyers perceive as a lack of mastery. These materials should form a coherent visual and narrative system, not three independent graphic decisions.
Wines, spirits, and gourmet food
In this sector, the most costly mistake is to mimic luxury codes without having the legitimacy. Packaging that tries to imitate the aesthetic of major houses without having the history, production means, or overall coherence creates an impression of counterfeiting that sophisticated buyers in this sector immediately detect.
The other misstep: not daring to be original because the sector is traditional. On the contrary, in a shelf dominated by classic packaging, a brand that dares to take a contemporary and coherent visual direction immediately stands out. Originality, in this sector as in others, is not a risk when it is rooted in a strategy.
How to tell if your current packaging is really working
Packaging that isn't doing its job sends signals. Not always obvious, not always immediate, but measurable if you know what to look for.
The signs of malfunctioning packaging: a low conversion rate despite good traffic, an average basket size lower than what the positioning should justify, frequent discount requests, customer feedback mentioning disappointment upon receipt, difficulty entering distribution despite a quality product, low repurchase metrics. Each of these signs can have several causes. But packaging is almost always part of the equation.
What we analyze first in a packaging audit at Wiiv: the consistency between brand identity and packaging, the readability of the main promise in a real context, visual positioning compared to direct competitors, and the consistency between what the packaging promises and what the product delivers. These four points cover the vast majority of problems we encounter.
When to redo rather than adjust: when the brand's positioning has changed, when the target audience has evolved, when the market has changed its codes and the packaging dates from a bygone era, or when commercial signals are persistent enough to indicate a structural problem. Adjusting a typography or a color will not solve a positioning problem. In this case, you need to go back to basics.
Frequently asked questions: how to make good packaging
Where to start when making packaging?
With strategic analysis, not with design. Before touching a color or a typography, it is necessary to check the consistency of the brand strategy (target, positioning, competition), define what the packaging should communicate primarily, and analyze the visual codes of the sector to identify differentiation spaces. Design comes last, as a visual translation of all this preliminary work.
How much does a packaging project cost?
The price of a strategic packaging project varies according to the state of your brand at the start, the number of references, and the complexity of regulatory constraints. If you already have an established brand identity and clear guidelines, the work is targeted. If you start without a defined brand foundation, you need to integrate a mini brand book into the project. The Wiiv estimator gives you a calibrated estimate for your situation in a few minutes.
What is the most common mistake in packaging?
Copying the visual codes of competitors or market leaders. The result is systematically the same: everyone looks alike, the shelf becomes unreadable, and the buyer decides on price for lack of other differentiation criteria. Good packaging occupies a distinctive visual territory, rooted in market analysis and not in imitating what already exists.
How do I know if my packaging is effective?
By looking at the right indicators: conversion rate, average basket size, repurchase rate, customer feedback mentioning receipt, ease of entry into distribution. Packaging that isn't doing its job manifests itself in these metrics before it manifests itself in raw sales. If several of these signals are unfavorable despite a good product, it is often the packaging that needs to be looked at first.
Should I use an agency or a freelance graphic designer for my packaging?
A freelance graphic designer can produce visually successful packaging. What they cannot always provide is the upstream strategic analysis: market reading, competitive analysis, knowledge of sectoral codes, formulation of the packaging promise. If this strategic work is not done, the most beautiful design in the world will not produce packaging that sells. A specialized agency like Wiiv, based in Paris and operating in Bordeaux, Lyon, and Milan, integrates this strategic dimension before touching design.
When should I redesign my packaging?
Three main signals indicate that it's time to redesign: sales are stagnant despite a good product, the brand's positioning has evolved but the packaging dates from an earlier era, or the sector's codes have changed and packaging that was differentiating has become generic. A slight update is not enough when the problem is structural. In this case, the strategic work needs to be revisited from the ground up.
How to anticipate range extension in your packaging from the start?
By building a visual system rather than unique packaging. From the very first product, decisions about color, typography, and face structure must be thought through so that they can be applied to several references without breaking identity. This work does not cost much more to do upfront. It saves costly redesigns when the range expands and the initial system no longer holds up.
Why do e-commerce businesses often underestimate their packaging?
Because they don't see it as a sales tool but as a logistical constraint. This is a mistake. For an e-commerce brand, packaging is often the buyer's first physical contact with the brand. If this moment breaks the brand dynamic built online, it also breaks loyalty and image dissemination. A buyer whose reception experience is disappointing does not share, does not return, and does not recommend.
