Do you market products or services? Or both? I have been fortunate to market “new products” and “new services” in my career. If you make products, you can learn from the service providers and if you are marketing services, you can learn from the product/packaging designers.
Great Packaging Gets People Excited
This post idea started with a stroll through Macy’s. I walked by a section that caught my eye and made me wish I had the kind of income to buy everything on the display. The display was for MAC cosmetics and their new Wonder Woman line of makeup. It tapped into my definition of a well-balanced, intelligent, beautiful woman on the go.
The packaging made me want to purchase. The Wonder Woman image on the exterior cardboard packaging and the patriotic stars on the tube was elegant and sophisticated. In fact, I am still telling people about the cool packaging a month after I bought the product. Generating excitement is part of good website design.
Online Company Packaging
Great website design is really great online packaging. Think of online design as the 3 best people in your organization at a tradeshow – 24/7. It functions as the CEO, CMO and CTO.
- CEO–Chief Executive Officer-It tells your story instantly, who you are and what you do.
- CTO–Chief Technology Officer-It works like your best customer service rep, finding information quickly and functioning well.
- CMO–Chief Marketing Officer-It works to be memorable while cross-sell and up-sell customers on the best parts of your line.
Show Me Great Website Design
So who does website design really well? The first thing that came to mind was the latest website launch for Larson Family of Companies in Hutchinson. They created a site design that was elegant, upscale and cozy – who wouldn’t want to live in one of their homes? The imagery is beautiful, similar to a Parade of Homes Model Home. And when you dig a little deeper into their blog, you see they are talking to a client and becoming memorable-leaving a fantastic first impression.
Another great site design from Marshall, MN is Camden Outdoors. All of the little touches in design–check out the camouflage social media icons–speak to their audience. The site demonstrates extensive hunting knowledge and gets their audience engaged in their products from the first page. Terrific branding.
What happens when you have LOTS and LOTS of products? You need to find a way to organize the design and keep the site clean. That’s what Runnings does on its website. With thousands of sku’s, they took the design challenge head on and found a way to keep it simple for their customers to find what they need. They also create a cross-sell environment to inform their customers about additional products to like. This design creates sales, helps customers and functions well; that’s an online product design win-win-win.
Great web design speaks to a target audience to create excitement which makes the leap to sales easy. Does your site act like a CMO, CTO and CEO? Is it hitting those nails on the head or giving you a sore thumb? If you need to refresh your site design, call Vivid Image. A site redesign should showcase your products and services to be memorable, to function well, tell your story and generate sales excitement.
Let us make a Wonder-ful online package for you, contact us today.
Now you have me curious about the lipstick packaging!
Beth,
I tried to take a good image of it–missing a light box to accomplish the goal. Everything I took looked off. So I am providing this link–it shows the exterior packaging that most people would throw away (I always toss the packaging lipstick comes in, not this time).
I like that the design goes around the cardboard tube and INSIDE the background is blue with white stars. The subtle nuances and thoroughness of the package design is similar to a graphic designer who finds to complementary design elements to make the site a WOW.
I found an image of the exterior packaging and added it to the post, but no images of the stars on the interior of the box, bummer.