Packaging is more than a container – it’s a key communication tool. It’s what helps consumers recognize your brand, understand what you’re selling, and decide whether to engage. A pack and visual identity test helps you evaluate whether your product’s design is doing its job effectively. It’s a form of consumer testing designed to assess how people perceive your packaging, what it communicates, and how well it stands out in a competitive market.

These tests focus on core questions like:

• Does the design clearly communicate what the product is?
• Does it stand out among competitors on the shelf or screen?
• Is it aligned with the brand’s identity and values?
• Are consumers able to recall the brand after a brief exposure?

Visual identity testing applies similar principles to broader brand design elements – from logos and typography to color palettes and imagery. A design might look “pretty,” but the real question is: will it resonate and perform?

Why Pack Testing Matters for Brands

The cost of launching ineffective packaging can be high. Reprints, lost sales, and consumer confusion can delay success or even damage trust. A packaging test gives you data before you commit. Instead of relying on internal opinions or individual preferences, you can see how real consumers respond.

Effective pack testing methodology for brands helps you answer:

• Which design version is most likely to convert?
• Where does your design fall short – and why?
• How does it perform across different audiences?

The Shift Toward Agile, DIY Pack Research

As timelines shrink and budgets tighten, many teams are turning to DIY research tools like Toluna to conduct design testing quickly and affordably. But it’s easy to miss the mark without clear objectives or well-designed questions. That’s where pairing these tools with human expertise – such as On Demand Talent – becomes crucial. These professionals help optimize the test setup, create realistic stimuli, and ensure your test is aligned with business goals.

Whether you’re preparing for a product launch or updating existing branding, a thoughtfully executed visual identity test helps you move with speed and confidence – while staying connected to your customer.

Toluna is a powerful DIY platform for running consumer testing – including pack testing and visual identity testing. It offers fast access to global audiences, customizable surveys, and real-time data dashboards. But like any tool, the outcome depends on how well it's designed and used. Here’s how to make the most of Toluna when testing packaging and design ideas.

Why Use Toluna for Design Testing?

Toluna shortens the feedback loop, enabling insight teams to test multiple concepts quickly. You can:

• Reach specific audiences at scale – filtered by age, usage, geography, and more
• Customize survey flows based on design types (e.g., packs, logos, full brand systems)
• Collect both qualitative feedback and quantitative metrics in one place

Whether conducting a DIY packaging study with Toluna and expert support, or running an internal sprint to screen early ideas, the platform supports both foundational and directional tests.

How to Test Product Packaging with Toluna

To set up an effective Toluna pack test, it’s important to define what you want to learn. Are you comparing two potential label designs? Testing a refreshed logo within a pack system? Or exploring how your packaging performs among competitors?

A basic Toluna pack test setup guide includes:

1. Uploading realistic visual stimuli (mock-ups, renders, or digital images)
2. Mapping survey questions to key objectives: clarity, standout, appeal, recall
3. Including a competitive set when possible (to measure relative performance)
4. Analyzing the data by key segments (e.g., target users, age groups)

On Demand Talent professionals can assist with designing stimuli, writing questions that avoid bias, and analyzing the results in context. Their experience ensures your pack research avoids common pitfalls – such as misinterpreting open-ends or over-relying on top-box scores.

How to Measure Pack Standout and Clarity

Two of the most critical metrics in pack testing are standout and clarity. Standout reflects how noticeable a design is compared to competitors, which is especially important in crowded retail or digital environments. Clarity measures whether the consumer understands what the product is and who it’s for, at a glance.

Effective Toluna surveys may include:

• „Shelf” tests (virtual lineups of products to test visual hierarchy)
• Unaided recall exercises
• Clarity-ranking questions (e.g., “What do you think this product does?”)

By integrating open-ended questions, you can also gather language directly from consumers – a key step in optimizing design communication.

Ultimately, using Toluna for marketing research in this way helps brands make smarter, data-backed decisions when finalizing visuals. And with help from On Demand professionals, you don’t just collect the data – you turn it into action.

When running a packaging or visual identity test using a platform like Toluna, selecting the right metrics is essential for making confident decisions. Clear, relevant measurements help you evaluate how well your design performs in real-world scenarios, even before it hits the shelf or digital marketplace. Let’s break down four of the most impactful metrics brands typically use: clarity, standout, brand recall, and context fit.

1. Clarity

Clarity assesses whether consumers can quickly understand what the product is, who it's for, and its key benefits. If your packaging is visually appealing but fails to clearly communicate the product’s purpose, it could hinder purchase decisions. Consider including closed- and open-ended questions in your Toluna test like “What is this product?” or “What do you believe this product does?”

For example, a fictional beverage brand testing a new design found that while the visuals were engaging, many respondents mistook it for an energy drink instead of a sparkling water – revealing a clarity gap.

2. Standout

Standout measures how easily your product captures attention on a crowded shelf – whether in-store or online. In your packaging test, this might be gauged with a competitive lineup, asking participants which product catches their eye first or which they’d most likely pick up. Design elements like color, size, icons, and contrast all play a role here.

Using Toluna’s visual testing capabilities, brands can simulate real-world shopping contexts to understand standout within a competitive set.

3. Brand Recall

Brand recall measures how well consumers can remember your brand after viewing the design. This helps indicate if your packaging reinforces brand equity or if it competes with – or confuses – your identity. You can test unaided recall by asking, “Without looking back, which brand was this product from?” and compare responses across designs.

4. Context Fit

This metric evaluates whether the design aligns with consumer expectations for the category. For instance, if you're launching a premium skincare product, does the design look upscale and trustworthy? If it looks too mass-market or generic, it may not resonate with your target audience.

• Does the pack visually “belong” in its intended category?
• Does it match the price point and brand positioning?
• How well does the visual identity fit within your overall portfolio?

Toluna testing makes it easy to test design alternatives against all these areas. But measurement is only half the story – designing great stimuli is just as critical to getting the right insights.

In any pack testing or visual identity research, the quality of your stimuli – what the consumer sees and evaluates – can make or break your results. It’s not just what you ask, but what you show. On platforms like Toluna, where speed and automation are strong advantages, it’s essential to ensure the creative assets used in your test accurately reflect the real-world product experience.

Design Testing Is Only as Reliable as the Stimuli Used

Stimuli are your mockups, digital prototypes, or concept visuals. These assets must reflect real consumer touchpoints as closely as possible. If your packaging rendering is unrealistic, missing context (like shelf, competitors, or usage environment), or uses placeholder elements, your insights may point you in the wrong direction.

Best Practices for Packaging Stimuli

• Use high-quality 2D or 3D visuals that mirror the actual product.
• Place the design in realistic settings (e.g., on the shelf, eCommerce thumbnail).
• Include front and back views if appropriate – consumers often rely on back-of-pack information.
• Limit distracting visual noise in simulated environments so you can isolate design effectiveness.

Likewise, ensure that your comparisons are apples-to-apples. Testing your new pack design against a poorly cropped or older competitor image skews results. Clean, context-consistent visuals boost the accuracy of diagnostic tools within the DIY research platform.

Why Context Drives Better Answers

If you're evaluating standout, showing your design on a plain white background won’t cut it. Research shows that visual identity testing benefits from realistic, contextualized environments. Whether it’s a fridge shelf for yogurt or a digital storefront for a skincare item, environmental cues help participants respond authentically.

For example, a fictional snack brand testing a new design on Toluna initially submitted flat images with no surrounding competitors. The research didn’t detect any standout. In a revised test with competitor packs added on a simulated shelf, the new design outperformed the current by 22% on first glance. The change? Better stimuli, not a different concept.

That’s why even within DIY research tools, creative setup deserves expert attention – a topic where On Demand Talent plays a key role.

DIY research platforms like Toluna offer tremendous speed and cost efficiency, but to maximize their value, strategic guidance is essential. That’s where On Demand Talent from SIVO Insights can elevate your outcomes – helping teams unlock deeper insights while avoiding common missteps in setup, design, and analysis.

Why Expertise Still Matters in a DIY World

As tools like Toluna become more widespread, marketers and researchers are under pressure to “do more with less.” But without expert input, studies can lack strong hypotheses, suffer from flawed stimuli, or miss the full value of diagnostic metrics. Seasoned insights professionals ensure every element – from sample design to output interpretation – supports business decisions.

Flexibility Without Compromise

On Demand Talent gives you immediate access to experienced professionals who know how to use DIY research platforms like Toluna strategically. Whether you need someone to build a pack testing methodology, guide visual identity testing for new designs, or coach your team on interpreting diagnostic tools, our experts are ready to help on a flexible, scalable basis.

Key ways On Demand Talent supports your Toluna testing:

• Designing effective research plans aligned with brand goals
• Creating test stimuli that mirror real-world conditions
• Optimizing Toluna platform setup for speed and accuracy
• Helping your team draw meaningful insights from results

Unlike freelancers or temporary contractors who may need direction, our professionals are capable of hitting the ground running. Whether you're a startup launching your first product or a Fortune 500 brand exploring pack refreshes, On Demand Talent helps teams extract more value from their Toluna investment.

Teaching Teams While Filling Gaps

Beyond just completing projects, On Demand Talent also builds long-term capabilities. By working side by side with your internal teams, they transfer skills – whether that’s how to evaluate packaging designs, improve DIY study setup, or interpret consumer testing results more confidently. The result? Short-term support and long-lasting capability uplift.

In today’s rapidly evolving insights landscape, the combination of agile tools and expert human insight is a game-changer. Our On Demand Talent solution gets you both.