Enhancing customer experience through your labelling and packaging

While in the store, your potential customer actively engages with your brand and product. The product decoration, such as your label and packaging, plays a vital role in shaping first impressions. Not least, it often determines whether your customer has a good or bad experience with your product.

Here at Skanem India, we know very well how valuable a first impression is when it comes to attracting your customer. And remember – first impressions are formed within a matter of seconds! This is true whether we meet someone for the first time or scan the store aisle. That's why that first moment of truth is crucial to whether your potential customer will pick up your product – or not.

If they choose to pick up the product, they move on to a crucial part of their decision-making process – the second moment of truth.

A.G. Lafley, Chairman, President and CEO of Procter & Gamble, first coined the phrase "First Moment Of Truth" in 2005. The company realized the customer's eyes typically swept through a store shelf full of products; theirs and their competitors – with a very short attention span given to each product.

1. The First Moment of Truth is when the customer looks at a product. This can be in-store or online.
2. The Second Moment of Truth is when the customer purchases and uses the product.
3. The Third Moment of Truth is when customers provide feedback about the product. They share it with the company, friends, colleagues, and family members – but we'll return to this one.

According to research on marketing and psychology, product decoration can trigger sensory impressions linked to positive or negative sentiments. It can make the way your labels look, feel, communicate, function – or even smell – stakeholders in that second moment of truth.

Let's take a closer look at five ways you can use your labels to engage and communicate with your customer in both the first and second moment of truth:

1. Better customer experience with visual design elements

Adding the type of visual elements to your label that your target audience will be visually drawn to should be of high priority when you're designing labels. This is crucial in their First moment of truth.

The colours, pictures and shapes you use also play an important part, but in terms of eye-catching elements, you might want to consider the following finishes:

• Enhance contrasts with MATT & GLOSS VARNISH
• Create glitter and glow with PEARLESCENT EFFECTS
• Create an impression of exclusivity with HOT or COLD FOIL EMBOSSING
• Get a metallic glow with METALLIC INK on the label
• Create the illusion of shimmer with METALLIC GRAPHIC elements

Read more: Labels: A window between brand and consumer

2. Better customer experience with sensory design elements

If a potential customer picks up your product, you better keep them keen and interested in that second moment of truth. Appealing to another sense, aside from only the visual, will increase the chance of them completing a purchase.

At Skanem India, we can create sensory experiences by using textures, fragrances and decorations such as:

• TACTILE VARNISH: Allows you to raise and manipulate areas of the label to create a tactile illusion of everything from raindrops on a leaf to grains of sand on a beach.
• TEXTURE VARNISH: Can make the label feel like other items, such as leather, snakeskin or pineapple – to name a few.
• SKANEM SOFT & GENTLE VARNISH: Makes the label extra soft to the touch, making the product appear gentle, soothing, and smooth.
• VELVET LAMINATION: Makes the area look and feel like velvet or velour.

Read more: Shrink Sleeves: Unlock the full potential of your product label

3. Better customer experience with interactive Smart Labels

Modern technology can be a powerful marketing tool. Both to engage customers and to understand them better.

The information provided on traditional labels and packaging can be quite conventional and linear, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, adding some competitive interaction to your labels will provide your customer with added value.

This can be solved in different ways, but the following three technologies and formats are prevalent right now:

• Gamification is about turning the label into a game that benefits the customer through physical prizes, digital scores, or challenges. This is not new, but gamification is constantly evolving. For example, McDonald's continues to have great success with their collectable Monopoly promo labels on containers, which contain both physical awards (e.g. free side orders) and digital codes. Additionally, products with interactive labels (such as Smart Labels) can send the customer to a landing page, website or an app by scanning the label with their smartphone.
• QR codes are powered by a relatively simple technology that connects your customers to the content of your web page. Instead of telling stories with words or pictures, you can, for example, tell your story with video or engage your customers with a contest. Simply by scanning the QR code with the camera function on their smartphone, the customer can discover new layers of your brand – perhaps with a film showing how or where the product is made, the story behind the manufacturer or a video tutorial with tips and tricks. This helps you build your brand while your customers connect with the product.
• Augmented Reality (AR) added to the label and packaging allows the consumer to interact with your product while still in the store or when using the product after purchase. By turning on the camera function on their smartphone and simply pointing it at your product, your chosen AR elements pop up. Perhaps a list of ingredients, stats, or animation related to that particular product. And best of all – the consumer sees all this directly in their camera function viewer. Yes, just like in the Pokemon Go app.

BONUS! Smart Labels provide a foundation for the Third moment of truth, as they can allow your customer to interact with your brand, share information with friends and build loyalty through prizes and discounts.

Read more: Refining the printing industry through digitalization and IIoT

4. Better customer experience with security labels

Use a security label to show your customers that you're serious about security.

A Skanem label can come with various security features, such as:

• Security Seal – a seal indicating whether the product has been opened. If security has been breached, the seal will be visibly torn, damaged or completely removed.
• Thermochromic Ink – an ink that changes its colour at different temperatures. That way, you'll know if the product has been exposed to a harmful environment in terms of temperature.
• Microprint – creates an element that makes it much harder to counterfeit the product. Both text and patterns can be used for this.
• Hologram stickers – Anticounterfeit, Heat-Sensitive, Heat Resistant and Waterproof.

5. The practical customer experience

A label can – and often should – add to the consumer's practical experience of both the purchase and the product. There are several different types of labels that do just that:

• The Handle Label – where the label acts as a handle for easy carry.
• The Bag Hanger – where the label makes it possible to hang flexible packaging on store shelves.
• The Bottle Hanger – is intended for the suspension of drip bottles, as in intravenous medication.
• The Resealable labels ­– keeping moisture on the inside, allowing the consumer to easily open and close packaging for, e.g., wet wipes or food.
• The Dry Reseal – labels that make it possible to close flexible packaging to maintain the freshness of products such as coffee, chips, bread and snacks.

Read more: How much should your labels be able to endure?

You'll never get a second chance to make a first impression

Using one or more of the design elements and labelling features listed in this article can enhance the customer experience and increase the chances of selling your product.

Strengthening the customer journey and your customer's moments of truth in relation to your products is something we're very passionate about here at Skanem India. Ensure your label manufacturer and printing facilities are increasing your branding efforts and not creating friction or a gap between your customers and your product. 

We create labelling solutions to help brands make their products look beautiful, stay secure, and share information with the end-users. That is why Skanem Labels are seen on millions of products daily in Pan India – whether you're at home, the office, or at a grocery store. Our labels come with a track record of quality, durability, and a genuine effort to help you increase your sales. Contact us to find the right labelling match for your product.