3 eCommerce Business Tips Guaranteed To Help You Grow

Julie Starr • June 22, 2020



eCommerce, while a constant and ever-changing game, has never been more critical in the world of business today. With the Coronavirus pandemic affecting how consumers do their shopping, more and more people are looking online to buy their products than ever before. It’s therefore hard to disagree with the glaringly obvious rhetoric that the few winners of the pandemic are businesses that had already built up a strong eCommerce presence before the virus took hold. Those who didn’t invest in eCommerce channels up until this point are now starting to fall at the wayside and closing up shop.

With the constant evolution of digital worlds and devices, if a new business wants to survive, they need an online store to keep up with on-going changing consumer behaviors. Not only to be more relevant and to improve sales but to also build closer relationships with their potential customers. 

Here are three eCommerce tips that are crucial to helping you grow your eCommerce store and stay afloat in this ever-changing landscape.

Be Mobile Friendly
 For your business eCommerce channels to grow, a responsive website that is both Google and mobile and tablet user friendly is a must. With the ever-increasing shift towards mobile browsing, a well-designed responsive website is essential for business owners who want to continue to optimize their content while increasing their customer reach. A responsive website will react to the size of your customer’s screen, depending on the device that they are using. So stay ahead of the trends, and your competition, and build your site with a mobile-centric focus.

 

Don’t neglect your social media
Social media channels such as Instagram have seen the shift towards eCommerce and have realized the unlimited business potential, even developing eCommerce features on the app. Even if you aren’t a fan of social media personally, letting that get in the way of your online business is a bad decision that could even result at the end of your business altogether. Whether you like it or not, social media now plays an integral role in how businesses are run and how they communicate with their customers. Given this latest marketing and business strategy trend, stay relevant and up to date and hire an experienced social media manager to take care of and grow your social media channels, and focus on on-going customer outreach. By being active on social media, your business automatically looks professional and trustworthy, compelling potential consumers to visit your shopify eCommerce store . If you have an Amazon store, then you still need to use social media to your advantage. It could also be wise to look into IP Alert too.


 

Use compelling visuals
Humans are visual creatures, with 65% of us being visual learners. It’s, therefore, no surprise that high-quality visuals can help make or break a product when it comes to making sales online. In fact, one study has shown that 67% of consumers confirmed that the quality of a product image can, and does, influence their decision on whether or not to buy a said product. 

Make sure to have a variety of images available to your customers, ranging from extreme close-ups to 360-degree angle photographs that showcase the product in its entirety. Ensure that each product can be seen clearly by having a clean and crisp white backdrop and include clear and concise copy next to your images. Lastly, you always want your customer to be able to relate to you, your brand, and your products. Hone in on this crucial aspect and enhance your relatability by adding images of customers using your products, signaling to them on a subconscious level that your products are high quality and that they are missing out by not making a purchase.

eCommerce, sustainability, and growing your business can all coexist together and actually help build a better brand.

 

Smart Sensors, Smarter Supply Chains: Enhancing Traceability in Food & Beverage

By Julie Starr • June 20, 2025
In today’s competitive food and beverage (F&B) landscape, traceability is no longer a compliance checkbox—it’s a differentiator. The ability to track every step of a product’s journey, from origin to shelf, is vital for regulatory accuracy and to ensure brand integrity, supply chain agility, and consumer trust. Add smart sensors to the mix: the quiet, tireless observers revolutionizing supply chain intelligence. Traceability Has a Data Problem Despite digitization across many F&B operations, most traceability systems still rely on fragmented or manual data inputs. Batch numbers, barcodes, and handwritten logs often stand between a supplier and clarity when things go wrong. This approach struggles with latency and scale. When contamination or delays occur, root cause analysis is slow, costly, and damaging. Smart sensors shift this paradigm by embedding real-time, contextual intelligence into every stage of the supply chain . Whether monitoring humidity in transit or recording fill-level precision in bottling plants, they remove the guesswork by turning physical conditions into structured, time-stamped data. From Passive Monitoring to Active Optimization Sensors used to be reactive tools, alerting operators to anomalies. But smart sensors now play a proactive role in process control. They measure, and they interpret. For example, temperature sensors embedded in cold chain logistics can dynamically adjust cooling systems or flag threshold breaches before spoilage occurs. These advancements reduce waste and loss at a systemic level. In a production facility, smart sensors integrated with PLCs can enforce recipe compliance, verify clean-in-place processes, and detect micro-stoppages in real-time. This enables operations to pivot faster and isolate inefficiencies before they cascade downstream. Trust is Built on Transparency Consumers are paying more attention to what they eat and drink. They’re looking beyond labels, expecting visibility into how ingredients are sourced, processed, and handled. Smart sensors make this level of transparency achievable —without burdening manufacturers with excessive manual oversight. By capturing metadata throughout production and distribution, these sensors create a digital footprint that’s tamper-resistant and instantly accessible. When this data is integrated with a central platform, brands can respond confidently to audits, recalls, and quality assurance challenges with a level of precision that would be impossible through legacy systems. Intelligence Without Infrastructure Overhaul One common misconception is that adding smart sensors requires a top-down reinvention of supply chain infrastructure. In reality, companies can deploy edge sensors in a modular, scalable way. Many modern solutions offer plug-and-play functionality, allowing for fast integration with existing machinery and MES systems. This is where suppliers like alps-machine.com are reshaping expectations. Rather than pushing proprietary ecosystems, they design sensor-ready equipment with interoperability in mind. This future-proofs investment and keeps businesses nimble in the face of regulatory or market shifts. Designing for Data Longevity Sensors are only as powerful as the context they capture. A smart implementation ensures the data collected can be standardized, stored securely, and accessed meaningfully across departments. This means moving beyond local dashboards toward centralized, queryable datasets that inform everything from supplier contracts to marketing claims. As AI and predictive analytics become more accessible, these data-rich environments will unlock new capabilities—such as predicting demand spikes based on real-time freshness indicators or adjusting production schedules dynamically based on in-transit sensor feedback. Final Thoughts: Smarter Isn’t Optional Traceability isn’t solved by more paperwork—it’s solved by embedded intelligence. Smart sensors don’t just help businesses know what happened; they help prevent the wrong things from happening at all. For companies in the food and beverage sector, adopting smart sensors is less about chasing innovation and more about enabling resilience, speed, and confidence in every decision.

Eco-Friendly Garden Prep: Summer Tips for a Greener Business Space

By Julie Starr • June 5, 2025
If you're lucky enough to have a garden as part of your business, taking some time to set it up for summer is a great investment of your energy. Not only will it be ready for your customers to spend time in, but you can also incorporate some eco-friendly elements into it. Many people just think about the property and what eco-friendly updates they can make , but there are plenty that you can implement in your garden. This gives you the best of both worlds. You own a sacred and beautiful place for your customers to spend their summer, and at the same time, you can do your part for a better planet. If this is the route you want to take, then you also need to consider how to do this with the different seasons. To help you on your journey, here are some top tips for preparing your garden for summer. Plant trees and flowers Planting trees and flowers in your garden is a must. It will make a beautiful scene of nature for everyone to enjoy. Trees will provide people and animals with shade, as well as provide a habitat for wildlife. More trees are needed in the world because they purify the air that we breathe. Flowers, especially if you plant with pollinators in mind, can be an excellent way to attract bees and butterflies, which contribute largely to the earth. Use natural pest control When preparing your garden for summer, you can do this more sustainably and kindly by using natural pest control. Simply by planting trees and flowers, you are likely to attract lots of different wildlife, some of which may destroy your efforts. While all wildlife should be considered, you may need to take measures. Some better and more eco-friendly ways you can do this, as opposed to spraying toxic chemicals onto your plants and into the air, you can implement companion planting, using protective nets over your crops, choosing resilient plants, using natural repellents, and encouraging natural predators so nature can do its thing. Maintain your garden Maintaining your garden in itself can make it more eco-friendly. Composting your garden waste regularly, and kitchen waste can help you to reduce overall waste and create nutrient-rich soil. This is a great cycle of sustainability. You can also keep on top of things that need cleaning and replacing, so you can recycle the materials for other garden structures and projects, and repurpose things around your garden before they become waste. If you have features in your garden like a swimming pool, then a regular pool maintenance service is going to be vital in keeping your water consumption to a minimum, as when it is cleaned and maintained, it will need to be drained and refilled less as well as using less energy. You could also consider how you can use natural purification methods to reduce chemical usage and support biodiversity right in your backyard. Your garden is just an eco-friendly project waiting to be built. Use these top tips to help you get started.