The moment a customer opens a parcel is the first time your brand exists physically in their world. Everything before that — the website, the product photos, the checkout — has been digital. The box, the mailer, the tissue, the way it opens — that's real. That's the unboxing experience.
For a long time, most eCommerce businesses treated packaging as a cost to be minimised. A brown box, some bubble wrap, a bit of tape. Job done. But the businesses that are winning online — particularly in fashion, gifts, cosmetics, and subscription — have worked out that the delivery is a marketing moment, and they're using it.
Here's what we've learned from 25 years of designing and supplying eCommerce packaging.
The unboxing experience isn't just for premium brands
The most common misconception we hear is that branded unboxing packaging is only for premium or luxury brands. It isn't.
The relevant question isn't "is our brand premium enough for nice packaging?" It's "what impression does our packaging make, and is that the impression we want?"
A cheap brown box with a polystyrene insert and a printed A4 invoice makes an impression. So does a well-chosen mailer in your brand colour with a simple inside print and a clean peel-and-seal closure. Neither costs a fortune. But they say very different things about your business.
What actually makes a great unboxing experience
We design unboxing packaging for businesses across the UK, and the best results come from getting a few fundamentals right rather than chasing elaborate or expensive solutions.
1. The outside of the box
Your packaging travels through a courier network, sits on a doorstep, and gets carried into your customer's home before it's opened. That's real-world brand exposure. A plain brown box wastes it. A box in your brand colour, or with a simple printed logo, doesn't.
You don't need full-colour photo printing on the outside. Often a single colour on a kraft or white box is enough to make the package feel intentional rather than generic.
2. The inside print — the reveal moment
Inside printing is one of the most effective and cost-efficient unboxing tools available. When your customer opens the box, the first thing they see is your branding, a message, a pattern, or a design. That's a moment that gets photographed and shared.
Our Incognito® inside-printed packaging range is specifically designed for this. We print in up to 4 colours on the inside of the box, on brown or white corrugated cardboard. The outside can remain plain — useful if you ship through Amazon or want discreet packaging — while the inside delivers the brand moment.
3. How easy it is to open
This is the one most brands forget. A great-looking box that takes scissors and three minutes to open creates a negative first impression before your customer has even seen the product.
Easy open features — tear strips, peel-and-seal closures, tuck-in tabs — make the unboxing feel intentional and frustration-free. We specialise in designing packaging that opens cleanly and simply, with no tools required. It's a small thing that makes a big difference to how customers feel about the experience.
4. What's inside the box — the layers
The product sits inside something. That something is part of the experience too.
Tissue paper in a brand colour, a simple sticker seal, a thank-you card, a small freebie — these things cost very little per unit but add significantly to the perceived value of the order. They also give your customer more to photograph, more to share, and more to remember.
Void fill is part of this too. Black paper crinkle fill looks very different to a polystyrene chip. eComWrap paper bubble wrap looks different to plastic bubble wrap. These choices signal quality — or the lack of it.
5. Whether it can be returned and resealed
For many eCommerce businesses — especially clothing, footwear, and homewares — returns are a significant part of the operation. Packaging that includes a second seal strip (a peel-and-seal strip inside the box that the customer uses to reseal for a return) reduces friction at the returns stage and saves your customer from hunting for tape.
This is a practical feature as much as an experiential one, but customers notice it and appreciate it.
What makes people actually share their unboxing
If sharing is part of what you're aiming for — and for many eCommerce brands, it should be — the packaging needs to give people a reason to photograph it.
The things that consistently get shared:
- A reveal moment — something unexpected when the box opens. Inside printing, a specific colour of tissue, a handwritten note.
- Brand coherence — packaging that clearly belongs to your brand, where every element feels considered. This signals quality even before the product is seen.
- Something worth showing — not just a product in a box, but a presentation. The way the product sits in the packaging, the folds of the tissue, the placement of the card.
You don't need to spend a lot to achieve this. You need to make deliberate choices rather than default ones.
How Datec can help
We design and supply unboxing packaging for eCommerce businesses across the UK — from startup subscription brands to established retailers with tens of thousands of orders per month.
Our Incognito® range covers inside-printed postal boxes in a wide range of standard sizes, with custom sizes available. We can also design fully bespoke packaging from scratch — custom dimensions, custom print, custom inserts — with competitive minimum order quantities and UK manufacturing lead times.
We offer samples before you commit to production, and our team are happy to talk through what's right for your specific products, volumes, and brand.
View Custom Printed Packaging Options | View eCommerce Packaging Solutions | Get a Quote
The Unboxing Experience: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Get It Right