Order packing for online boutiques

If you’ve been on the small business side of Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest lately, you’ve likely noticed that order packing videos are wildly popular right now! Think beauty filters over a POV of an entrepreneur creatively packing their products (plus plenty of extras) and preparing boxes to ship to eager customers.

Whether you plan to make your own order packing video, or simply want to delight customers with a beautiful unboxing experience, we think you’ll find this order packing walkthrough informative. Let’s take a look!

Order Packing Essentials

1. Safety First

Begin by cleaning and disinfecting your packing surface with wipes or a spray and paper towel. While this step is almost imperative when packing an order for a video, ensuring a clean, disinfected packing surface really is a good habit to get into in general.

2. Boxes and Mailing Pouches

If you will be shipping several loose or fragile items, you’ll want to protect them with a sturdy box. Select a size that allows you to add just enough padding to the products, but isn’t so big that the products will rattle around during shipping. The more you can do to ensure that everything arrive in one piece the better.

Custom Labelled Product Boxes - Of course, product protection isn’t the only goal. This is where you can start to build excitement about the unboxing. If you’d like your boxes to have a unique look try adding labels printed with fun messaging, images or your logo to the exterior and interior. You can select labels in a wide variety of materials, shapes and sizes to suit your box and to express your business’ unique personality.

Shipping Pouches/Padded Pouches – Shipping pouches are great for mailing items that don’t require much protection from folding, crushing or jostling and are typically smaller in size. They are also a great way to ship small to medium size boxes. So, once you’ve safely packaged and protected your order in a box, you can slide the whole thing into a shipping pouch, seal it and mailing it off. Fun Fact – shipping pouches come in more than just plain white! You can find them in an assortment of colours and patterns!

3. Fillers and Protective Wrap

Once you’ve selected your box it’s time to fill it with cushioning. Create a layer of padding all around to absorb any impact if the box is dropped, and to help reduce any content shifting during shipping. A layer of bubble wrap topped with paper shred makes a pretty and protective first layer for small to medium size boxes.

Soft items like clothing, household linens, scrunchies and other items may not requires extensive protection, but if you pack them in a box it’s a nice touch to add some neatly folded tissue paper as a first layer, then add your items and fold the ends of the tissue over the item. You may also want to add an attractive label to seal the tissue.

4. Thank You Cards

Thank you cards have become an important part of small business order packing. They add a valuable personal, touch, and can go a long way toward letting customers feel the authenticity of there being a real person behind the company.

5. Samples, Stickers and Treats

Adding samples or surprises to an order has been a tradition among online boutiques for many years, and has become even more popular thanks to order packing videos shared on social media. Whether it’s a scrunchie or two tossed in with a makeup order, a pair of interesting socks added to custom designed basketball shoes, candy, lip gloss, or custom stickers, this is an extra touch that customers really enjoy.

6. Shipping Labels

When adding your shipping labels, don’t forget to add special “fragile” and “this side up” labels as well!

Are you an Avery customer and small business owner in Canada? Drop your social links in comments, so we can learn more about your business!