PAK'R Magazine Fall 2017

FALL 2017

ISSUE 003

PAK'R TOTAL PACKAGING SOLUTIONS

FARM-TO-TABLE How Local Farms are Making an Impact

5

Farm-to-Table Technologies Revolutionizing the Way We Eat

WASTE NOT, WANT NOTÂ Why Wastefulness is the Greatest Threat to the Planet

CONTENTS 03 EDITOR'S NOTE 04 AGRICULTURAL ENTREPRENEURIALISM 5 Farm-to-Table Technologies Revolutionizing the Way We Eat

09 FARM-TO-TABLE How Local Farms are Making an Impact

13 WASTE NOT, WANT NOT Why Wastefulness is the Greatest Threat to the Planet

18 SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY How Protecting Our Planet Starts

By Helping Each Other

23 ECOMMERCE CHECKLIST 15 Ways to Boost Online Sales and Traffic

02 | PAK'R MAGAZINE

Staff EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Scott Borhauer SENIOR EDITOR Anthony Magestro

Editor's Note I've yet to meet someone who doesn't enjoy a nice warm meal, but food doesn't magically just appear in our refrigerators. In this issue, we're exploring the logistics of agriculture, the farm-to-table trend, and social sustainability.

ART DIRECTOR Nathan Stanley

EDITORIAL OFFICES FREMONT, CALIFORNIA 34175 Ardenwood Blvd. Suite 201 Fremont, CA 94555 HOPKINSVILLE, KENTUCKY 500 Krusteaz Way Hopkinsville, KY 42240 THORNTON, ILLINOIS 16850 S Canal Street Thornton, IL 60476 Tel: +1-888-985-5724 Int'l: +1-888-744-9962 FRANCE SAS 16 Avenue des Entrepreneurs 95400 Villiers-le-Bel, France Tel: +33-13-404-1800 NETHERLANDS Nijverheidsweg 4 6422 PD Heerlen, Netherlands Tel: +31-45-566-7400 SUBSCRIPTIONS +1-888-985-5724 16850 S Canal Street Thornton, IL 60476 Outside the United States: +1-888-744-9962

Hey there, Reader!

Since we're at the end of North America's growing season, we figured there'd be no better time to talk about our nation's farmers and the current logistics trends of their industry.

All too often we take the ease of buying food for granted. Whether you want to go to a store, a restaurant, or order online, getting a meal is a lot more convenient than what it used to be even just a century ago. However, not many people stop to think of the long and complex journey the food on our plates takes to get there. That's what this issue is all about: celebrating current agricultural trends and what's on the horizon for the future.

From the sweeping trend of farm-to-table businesses to new technology like automated farming robots that you can set up in your home garden, this is just a taste of what the American food and farming industries are coming up with. With the increased digitalization of farming equipment that help monitor, manage, grow, and sell crops, we'll also cover some web-related topics and how the Internet's plays a role in agricultural innovation. We've also got some spring cleaning tips for your own website and social media marketing strategies to take a look at -- and why your business should hop on the Internet if it hasn't already.

With that, we hope you have a wonderful Fall season and get the chance to enjoy the bounty of the harvest with your friends and loved ones. And don't forget to thank your local farmer for the cornucopia on your table, too!

SCOTT BORHAUER

PAK'R is published by FP International Publishing Group LTD. minipakr.com

Editor-in-Chief

AGRICULTURAL ENTREPRENEURIALISM: 5 FARM-TO-TABLE TECHNOLOGIES REVOLUTIONIZING THE WAY WE EAT We’ve come a long way from using hand scythes and oxdriven plows. Indeed, like every other industry, the agricultural sector has been seeing a wave of new technologies and services, some of which we’ll explore right here.

AGRICULTURAL ENTREPRENEURIALISM them to start civilization over again. One of those technologies was the GECK (or “Garden of Eden Creation Kit”) which allowed vault dwellers to set up irrigation and water processing, plant crops, and monitor the development of their fledgling colony above ground.

Thankfully, we’ve managed to avoid nuclear desolation so far, but a real-life GECK exists in the form of Farm from a Box. Aptly named, Farm from a Box is exactly what it’s advertised to be.

Source: Farm from a Box

The digital world has made a vast wealth of knowledge available to us. With rapidly-evolving technologies and sharing information at light speeds through the Internet, with time and study you can become a master of anything you put your mind to with an ease of accessibility never seen before (the ancient Library of Alexandria before its sacking notwithstanding). When it comes to the business of food, automation and sustainability to keep costs down are high priority.

fiction: from automated small-scale farming that you can set up in your own yard to market and information hubs that let you network with other farmers and food businesses. The potential for agricultural tech development is as vast as the golden fields of grain that stretch across so many miles of our country’s heartland.

While the development of agriculture is widely concerned to be the beginning of human civilization, its continued progress and increased market accessibility due to farm-to-table and start-up culture has marked a new chapter in our existence.

Farm from a Box

Now, we have food production and processing technologies that look as if they were directly pulled from science

Here’s just a small sample of some farmto-table technologies that are revolutionizing our relationship with food.

As an avid video game enthusiast, one of my favorite series is Fallout, a retrofuturistic sci-fi game that throws you in the new American wasteland after a nuclear war annihilates the world in 2077. Thousands of people sought the shelter of underground vaults, stocked with provisions and crazy postworld technologies that would allow

Whereas the imaginary GECK fits in a standard briefcase, Farm from a Box is stuffed into a converted shipping container, complete with all the essentials you need to turn an open field into a cornucopia of edible crops.

Within the box (you can get 10-, 20-, or 40-foot variants, depending on what you need), equipment such as solar panels, weather vanes, and irrigation systems are deployed, converting the container into a central hub for the farm. From here, farmers can access and store tools, as well as charge electronics and hook computers up to a built-in Wi-Fi network.

The hub also monitors crop data like moisture and systems functions to automate as much as possible while giving the farmers accurate readings of the soil and crops they’re working with.

Exact specifics vary from box to box, but all include the following features:

PAK'R MAGAZINE | 05

3 kiloWatt solar power from panels mounted on the roof Micro-drip irrigation to regulate crops and extend local growing season (through regulation) Water purification Seedling housing Basic farming tools Charging area, Wi-Fi/cloud support, and LED lighting Ranging from $25,000 to $45,000, each twoacre farm can support up to 150 people with a full diet of produce each year. In other words, the initial cost is about $167 – $300 to feed each person for a year. Try supporting a four-person family on a food budget like that for a month, let alone twelve of them.

While these numbers don’t factor in continued upkeep of the grounds, the Farm from a Box system aspires to be as sustainable and recyclable as possible, maximizing reuse and minimizing waste.

Farm from a Box was made -- as you can imagine -- to make farming easier, especially for those who’ve never gotten their hands dirty before. With built-in training modules to help novice farmers learn the ropes, these boxes can be set-up in areas where food scarcity is a major concern: this can be in developing countries overseas or in the midst of urban food deserts where nutritionally-rich victuals are hard to come by.

Outside of producing food for survival, Farm from a Box is a great educational suite for agriculture students or for start-up farmers who want to break into the market.

No matter the reason, it’s a pretty cool concept that could help feed some of the hundreds of millions of people that are starving around the world as well as give people the chance to add delicious produce to their diet.

But maybe you want something on an even smaller scale...

06 | PAK'R MAGAZINE 06 | PAK'R MAGAZINE

Source: FarmBot

FarmBot Even if you haven’t heard of Fallout, if you’re on Facebook, you’ll definitely know about FarmVille (I wasn’t kidding about how much I enjoy games… but I promise this is the last reference).

Whether you’ve played it yourself or have been bombarded with invites from friends to start your own game, FarmVille has you placing various crops on a big ol’ grid, waiting for time to pass to harvest them and make money, buy more crops and equipment -- you get the idea.

But now you can take your crop-plotting skills and apply them to real life with just a little more effort. Enter FarmBot, an automated open-source farming robot that manages your backyard vegetable garden for you. Not unlike the Facebook game, FarmBot uses a drag-and-drop interface with a machine that responds almost immediately to carry out its designated tasks. With two rails on either side of a raised planter, the robot glides across the structure in order to plant and water crops as well as kill weeds by pounding the daylights out of them, back into the earth.

Since FarmBot is open-source, the materials and instructions are free to use and adapt depending on your own needs.

It can be used out in the open, exposed

to the elements or in a cozy greenhouse. Not only can it be used in your own yard, but this is another tool that can be used for education and commercial applications as well. And, in case you’re not so handy, pre-selected part kits will be available hopefully within the year (you can even preorder your own now off their site at farmbot.io).

For those who are a bit more technically inclined, it’ll make any engineer with a green thumb pretty excited.

Using Raspberry Pi as an operating system, you can plan your own growing regimens to schedule tasks based on a plant's life-cycle as well as build your own custom sequencing, adjusting for watering, weeding, and other automated tasks, depending on your climate, the size of the gardening plot, and other factors.

Don’t know how to program? No problem. The interface is intuitive and drag-and-drop; all you need to do is pick out what you need to happen. But having some programming knowledge will help you really tweak and make FarmBot your own.

Managed by a computer or even your phone or tablet, tending your own fruit and vegetable garden has never

been easier. Why bother with FarmVille’s virtual crops anyway when you can have your own real produce? I’ve been saying the same thing about Guitar Hero and just learning how to play guitar but… I promised this would be the last game reference I’d make so… moving on.

Food Vending: Farmer's Fridge and JuiceBot Admittedly, I couldn’t choose between one or the other so I decided to include both. Whether you choose Farmer’s Fridge or JuiceBot, you’re sure to get delicious, high quality food from a vending machine, which is a bit unheard of if you think about the usual fare of chips, cookies, and other snacks that might be tasty, but aren’t so healthy.

Based in Chicago, Farmer’s Fridge is a vending machine -- sorry, a veggie machine as the company insists -- that sells nutritious, locally-sourced, organic ingredients. Filled with everything from colorful, fresh salads to oatmeal and fruitand-yogurt parfaits, Farmer’s Fridge also has proteins like fish, chicken, and tofu from sustainable sources.

The machine itself is made from reclaimed wood and other recycled materials with an easy-to-use interface that streamlines transactions. In the same vein of

Source: Farmer's Fridge

eco-friendliness, each machine costs about $25 for electricity a month while still keeping everything at the perfect temperature.

Because the food is fresh and organic, deliveries happen every day: new fresh produce arrives every morning and everything made from scratch is ready by 5 a.m. to be distributed to the machines. Salads come in by 10 a.m. before lunch; other menu items are delivered Monday through Friday, depending on demand. All the leftover food is then donated to food pantries as well as to make space for the next batch.

If you’re looking for something in the office that screams sustainability and farm-to-table deliciousness, Farmer’s Fridge would be right up your alley.

If you need something to wash all that down, JuiceBot’s got you covered. Using a cold-press method from local fruits and vegetables that are swapped out every 24 to 48 hours, JuiceBot distributes raw juice that’s poured in either paper cups or glass bottles. Why glass? According to JuiceBot’s official site: “JuiceBot is a distribution system that eliminates prepackaging to shield raw, cold pressed juice from light and heat oxidation. Raw juice is very sensitive and starts to degrade in nutrient and enzyme content once packaged in clear

plastic bottles. Every drop of cold-pressed juice in your glass is made locally, and 100% raw. The JuiceBot flips distribution on its head by allowing you to personally create and bottle your own juice. Cold pressed juice has optimal levels of nutrition for 48 hours after being cold pressed. The 20th century distribution model of bottling juice at a large plant and shipping it across the country no longer suffices.”

No plastic also cuts down on plastic waste as well as exposure to harmful chemicals like BPA and BPS. On top of the quick turnaround of produce offered within the machines, JuiceBot uses UV light to disinfect the dispenser compartment.

When it’s not in use, this compartment remains sealed to prevent foreign pathogens and materials from contaminating the area after regular UV flushes that happen after each juice dispensing.

Between JuiceBot and Farmer’s Fridge, you can enjoy all the benefits of fresh, organic, local produce right at your fingertips.

Kakaxi While we’re on the topic of things at one’s fingertips, how about all the farming stats you can imagine when planting crops, herbs -- really whatever you want?

Kakaxi is just that, a solar-powered sensor that detects and measures

Source: JuiceBot

PAK'R MAGAZINE | 07

what they do best, handling all the logistics issues and spitting out reports to monitor produce and livestock, ensuring they comply with federal and local laws and regulations.

By streamlining these internal processes while offering another channel to sell their produce, FarmersWeb is a budgetary double whammy that brings any farm at any scale into the 21st century.

Source: Kakaxi

weather and environmental factors like temperature, humidity, and daylight and sun exposure. By embedding the device in the ground, it can monitor soil and plant health as well as give you a visual time lapse with the on-board camera so you can monitor plant growth.

Similar to Farm from a Box’s central hub, Kakaxi feeds this information wirelessly to your favorite device while backing it up in the Cloud. While you don’t have to be a farmer to have Kakaxi, the company offers the devices for free so that farmers can run (and publish) their metrics.

Why would they publish this information where others can see? In part, it’s accountability for potential buyers to see that the crops they might be buying are top quality. On the other hand, it’s sheer customer curiosity as people are becoming more and more interested in where their food and products come from. While some might shudder at the lack of information privacy with something like this, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing -especially when it comes to food.

Farmers also benefit from being able to connect directly with their customers, something that has only really been seen with roadside stands or local farmer’s markets. Social media, like every other industry it’s touched, is now reshaping 08 | PAK'R MAGAZINE

the agricultural sector, making it easier for others to do business and connect professionally. That brings us to our last farm-to-table innovation that’s sweeping the industry.

FarmersWeb Kakaxi handles all the technical bits of farming, focusing on the nitty gritty metrics that have to do with planting, growth, and harvesting. FarmersWeb, a website launched back in 2012 and picking up a ton of momentum with the farm-to-table movement, takes care of the logistics after those crops are picked and packaged.

Just as Kakaxi puts farmers in direct contact with potential buyers, it’s merely a window with which they can see each other. FarmersWeb is the door -- no, garage bay door -- from which commerce flows, letting farmers sell directly to customers through the Internet.

By removing the middleman, FarmersWeb cuts down on logistics and fuel costs through managing shipping lanes. Moreover, it also focuses on things like warehouse management, sales, labor, and marketing.

This also, in turn, allows farmers and food producers to expend more energy on

Though the website itself isn’t all that new (at least, in Internet time), these five years have shown its upward trend for success.

First handling only farms within New York state, you can connect and interact with FarmersWeb from any part of the country.

With free, $40/month, and $75/month service subscription packages, you can scale your online storefront to your liking with FarmersWeb skimming a small percentage (around 3%) off the top… that is, if you don’t like the static monthly fee.

It’s not just for individuals looking to buy direct from farmers, but other businesses like distributors, wholesalers, restaurants, and food services for cafeterias and the like. Yet again, the Internet is bringing people together and allowing commerce to flow a lot easier, speeding up transactions and automating the parts we humans don’t like dealing with manually.

These are just a few examples of cutting edge farm-to-table technologies that are making waves for both providers and consumers. We aren’t even into the 2020s yet but I personally can’t wait to see where these technologies and their byproduct trends take us.

Article By: Anthony Magestro

Farm-to-Table: How Local Farms are Making an Impact When it comes to getting food on the table, we often just think about bringing some groceries home from the store (or whatever takeout is convenient). But farming and agriculture are still alive and well, even giving way to a new class of small-scale farmer. Here we’ll discuss some ways these micro-farmers are making big changes in our communities and how the farm-to-table industry is going to give conventional agriculture a run for its money.

FARM-TO-TABLE

Additionally, by keeping your business connections nearby, you cut down on a number of costs: from shipping and product turnover to avoiding quality degradation in transit (produce, for instance, has less likelihood spoiling being shipped down the street than across the country), local logistics are hard to beat.

By creating a lattice of business connections between local farms, restaurants, food processors, and distributors, you provide a solid foundation augmented by visiting consumers, in turn building a sustainable community structure all its own.

Farm-to-table is more than just some buzzword or passing fad. Indeed, it speaks to the evolution of the modern consumer who’s interested in where the products they buy and food they eat come from. As the 19th and 20th century saw the swelling of companies across every industry into monopolies, the 21st century is dialing the notion of economic success back to smaller-scale niches that manage to outcompete the larger industrial jacksof-all-trade.

In other words specific to farm-to-table, a growing number of consumers are inclined by both nostalgia and product quality to favor the little guy, especially if the food producer in question is local. Just as every town has its loyalties to sports and various cultural activities (some towns might favor music, and others, visual arts), so too do they have loyalties to their local businesses. Look at most (if not all) towns in Wisconsin, each with their own creameries, breweries, butchers, or some other way to distribute their beloved meats, cheeses, and beer (as someone born and raised there, I miss the food probably the most as I find myself now on the West Coast). Still, aside from a cuisine preference, there’s a variety of benefits that farm-to-table economies can bring to communities.

Keeping Coffers and Stomachs Full As with any business venture, farm-to-table producers have to keep turning a profit in mind. What makes these local businesses more lucrative, however, is that by buying and doing business locally -- whether that’s within the town itself, the county, or your slice of the state/region -- you keep your money spent within the community. Even better, if your local fare becomes nationally (or, on rare occasions, globally) renown, your town has a means to bring in (and keep) tourism dollars, further used to improve the well-being of the citizens and their businesses.

Speaking of sustainability, farm-to-table economics are both good for the environment and those that live in it (i.e. every person ever). Local shipping benefits notwithstanding (carbon emissions and fuel costs are lower with 10 - 100 miles of travel versus the average of 1,500 miles that produce is shipped in conventional food supply chains), but local food tends to be of a higher, healthier quality than its transcontinental counterparts.

All things equal, a lot of this has to do with the process of harvesting and transporting foods like produce and meat.

In the case of fruits and vegetables, for instance, they might be harvested before they’re ripe in order to keep them from being over-ripened during transit. While this might be cost-effective, it does little for nutrition and taste as a tomato picked green will still taste like a green tomato regardless of the color it ends up.

Farms that are closer to the food's endpoint -- whether it’s a restaurant or grocery store -- aren’t nearly as constrained by time, harvesting their produce at the right moment at peak flavor. The result? Better tasting food with better vitamin and mineral content.

PAK'R MAGAZINE | 10

This same model applies to all whole foods, not just produce: meats, cheese and dairy products, nuts and legumes, and baked items all tend to be fresher and tastier when made closer to home. After all, what would you prefer in the morning: a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice or “juice” made with about 50% fruit content and reconstituted from concentrate after being stored in some warehouse for who knows how long? If you cringed just a little (even if you stifled it), you see my point. Certainly, some foods are better when they’re in season, but by understanding this ebb and flow of food availability in your own market, you’ll have a better understanding of when to buy food while it’s most delicious and least expensive.

Backtracking to the idea of community loyalty, farm-to-table also inspires stories and legacies to be shared as to how these foods and businesses came to be. By buying local products from small business owners, you’re connecting not only through commerce, but shared environment.

Your child might go to school with the farmer’s kid -- whose new shoes you helped buy because you chose to buy his parents’ strawberries over some major conventional supplier. In a world that grows ever-connected through technology and the Internet, this need for connectedness still pervades, even with what we eat.

While farm-to-table provides the potential backdrop for countless stories, it may not be as rustic and idyllic as we believe. That isn’t to say that things are bad or that we’ve been deceived yet again by the media sensationalism that surrounds a movement. Just the picture of farm-totable might be a bit… well… different than what we had in mind.

11 | PAK'R MAGAZINE

A New Kind of Farmer Though farm-to-table conjures up images of the “good ol’ days” where farmers whose land has been passed down for generations all go to market in a dedicated space in town to mingle with the townsfolk, this isn’t always the case.

Certainly, there are plenty of generational farmers who participate in the movement, but with every viral startup opportunity, so too come technology-toting city slickers trying to have a go at this whole farming thing.

CityLab compiled a great article on the “rural gentrification” associated with the farm-to-table movement that has both helped and, in some cases, hindered local economies, with their main focus on Saxapahaw and Kinston, North Carolina respectively. Saxapahaw fell on hard times once a local mill closed with the nearby farms following suit. Mac Jordan, a descendent from the family that once owned the mill, went to work trying to revitalize the village, having earned quite a bit of success in the process. He started by bringing the mill back up and running while turning the surrounding homes his family owned into apartment complexes and rental cottages.

Then, he built connections with these new folks who, in turn, added more housing as well as other businesses such as a brewery, a butchery, and a pub. The goal was not only to rebuild Saxapahaw, but to ensure its future as well, a goal Jordan and his new partners all had in common. To do so, local business owners forged relationships with one another.

Eliza MacLean sold animals from her Cane Creek Farm to the Left Bank Butchery across the road; Tony Gaddis, owner of TerraStay used his four-season farming model to keep the town supplied with fresh produce, partnering with neighboring farms to keep costs down and the townspeople and tourists wellfed.

While people like MacLean and Gaddis have done their part to bring money back to Saxapahaw, helping to paint a picture of farm-to-table economics that clearly work, they aren’t your “typical” farmers.

MacLean once had a career in veterinary medicine and environmental toxicology while Gaddis had already cut his teeth on previous start-up ventures prior to TerraStay. That isn’t to say they’re any less of farmers than those who’ve inherited land… merely that they are,

indeed, different, having been from a different world with different backgrounds.

Suffice it to say, despite Saxapahaw’s success, not all farm-to-table examples are as good for the community as one would hope. Kinston, on the opposite end of the spectrum, has a divide between those who benefit from its farm-to-table staples and those who do not -- all of which residing within the same town. As CityLab’s Matt Hartman put it: “Kinston is most famous for two things: Chef and the Farmer -- an acclaimed finedining restaurant whose entrees run about $30 -- and poverty. A report from the University of North Carolina’s Center for Urban and Regional Studies named one Kinston neighborhood the most distressed tract in the state, based on unemployment rates and income, and another was in the top ten for rural areas. A third of the city is below the poverty line.”

That isn’t to say that Chef and the Farmer owners Benjamin Knight and his wife chef Vivian Howard don’t have their community in mind. On the contrary, they hoped to “light a spark in [Kinston] and help transition some of Eastern Carolina’s displaced tobacco farmers into food farmers,” as explained on their website.

And those aren’t empty words: their restaurant managed to spend almost $240,000 on local food sources in 2015 alone. Though the kicker is that almost 90% of that was paid for by tourists who came to visit the town. While it’s obvious Knight and Howard’s restaurant helps inject money into the local economy, the locals themselves aren’t the ones enjoying it.

Though Chef and the Farmer has helped bring in new service jobs to the city, their staff is, as Knight put it, racially inverse; while their staff is mostly white, Kinston’s population is only 28% white. Moreover, poverty and race also play a role in the town’s make-up, with 16% of white residents and 40% of African American residents at or below the poverty line.

While the farm- to-table movement is often used as an example to help build and bring up an entire community (see Saxapahaw), it might not always help everyone, especially those who need it the most.

Sowing the Seeds of a Sound Foundation Farm-to-table has its obvious benefits, but it also has some unforeseen consequences if held to its ideal of strengthening the community. Though Chef and the Farmer has helped bring prestige and money to Kinston, without these businesses actively taking part in building the community for the welfare of all its citizens, the movement runs the risk of being glorified agricultural gentrification. After all, what good is a new restaurant or grocery store in town if you can’t afford to eat there, instead potentially starving in poverty?

Make no mistake: these social divisions can be avoided and even erased by reinvesting the money earned into the local population. Whether through charity (such as food shelves), better employment practices, or offering cheaper goods whenever possible, there are plenty of ways to make positive impacts through the farm-to-table movement.

Certainly, we care enough about the journey our food takes to get from a vine or pasture to our dinner plates. In order for this model to work as it was intended, we must also care about our neighbors and their stories as well.

Article By: Anthony Magestro

PAK'R MAGAZINE | 12

Waste Not, Want Not: Why Wastefulness is the Greatest Threat to the Planet Carbon dioxide emissions. Giant garbage islands floating in the middle of the ocean.

Toxic air and drinking water. While these are all environmental issues we need to rein back under control, they all have one thing in common: rampant wastefulness. Here we’ll discuss how it isn’t just plastics or CO2 poisoning the planet, but our lack of understanding on how to use our resources and recycle products wisely.

WASTE NOT

Green living advocates are quick to demonize things like carbon dioxide and plastic, though not without reason. We’ve exceeded 400 parts per million of CO2 in our atmosphere which has been contributing to climate change the world over. We’re running out of places to put our garbage and even then, the chemicals from plastic, electronics, and heavy metals (to name a few) leach into the ground and water tables, choking the life from them.

But these are merely symptoms of a greater disease: sheer consumer and industrial waste.

Before you begin to feel defensive, fret not. I’m not going to condescend you or tell you you’re not doing enough. I’m going to assume you care about keeping yourself, your family, and your business ventures happy and healthy, regardless on your stance on climate change and global warming. The fact remains though that we cannot necessarily blame our problems on manmade materials or emissions that stem from our activities. Indeed, the problem lies within our misuse and lack of appreciation for these materials or how what we do affects those around us, planet included.

14 | PAK'R MAGAZINE

WANT NOT

In our last issue, we covered how plastic food packaging wasn’t necessarily the devil we thought it was, instead turning our attention to food waste and its harmful impacts. The rationale is that while improper disposal of plastic is harmful in its own way, there is nothing good that comes from food waste and, by extension, all other kinds. Spoiled products notwithstanding, food waste represents energy, water, and labor investment into something that gave no return aside from garbage; people still went hungry, emissions were still generated, and over a billion tons of food went to waste. And that’s just last year alone.

By definition, waste is a careless use or expenditure of something, either extravagantly or to no purpose. Even if you are a billionaire, you didn’t get to where you were simply by throwing money at things without a care. As a business owner, you don’t remain successful by producing something that will only end up in the trash before a customer even touches it. As a human being, you don’t stay healthy by filling your environment with rubbish that could’ve been used to improve not only your own circumstances, but so many around you (in fact, the inverse is probably the soundest business practice you can find).

Again, you probably don’t need me to tell you all of this. It’s impossible to open a newspaper or scroll through social media without some mention of how we need to better take care of the environment and the finite resources and space we have on our planet. However, let’s take some time to explore the problem with specific examples and suggest ways we can solve the issue.

After all, good business is all about supply and demand. As there’s no demand for wasteful or unsustainable ventures, you ought to steer yourself on a better course than have the unforgiving market do so for you.

More Problems Means More Opportunities I get it, I get it. You don’t want any more doom and gloom and the topic of sustainability is often stressful. Whether it’s the environment or your purse strings that motivate you, it’s still a disruption to the status quo we feel familiar and comfortable with.

But if you seek to be a leader and innovator in your given marketplace, being comfortable with the status quo will open up competition poised to dethrone you. It’s those people and businesses who try new things and tackle problems head-on that make names for themselves; like anything else, innovation is a high risk, high reward kind of game.

So let’s focus on business in general: what are some wasteful issues that you’re bound to encounter and need addressing?

Mind you, these are just a few problems that plague every industry in some form or another, but they definitely need savvy solutions nonetheless:

Energy efficiency. Being energyefficient means everything from keeping climate control at its most effective setting (good insulation, for instance, keeps heat inside during the cold winter months, and heat out during the hot summers) to electronics and lighting being shut off when not in use. Office buildings suck the local grid of vast amounts of electricity, especially if equipment is left on all day and all week -- even when people aren’t there working. Moreover, buildings themselves aren’t made with renewable materials, already causing unsustainability issues from the day the foundation was first laid.

Paper and electronics waste. From printing every email and memo to using only one side of a page, paper waste has been a major thorn in the green side of many office settings. Doubly so, whether or not old printers end up in landfills because they’ve outlived their purpose or were done in by a frustrated employee, too many electronics end up trashed when they could’ve easily been reused or recycled.

Carbon emissions. Electric and energy costs notwithstanding, another culprit to business-related carbon emissions is the morning and afternoon commute. As everyone gets in their cars, not only do they clog the roadways with thousands of others, but each car spews fumes into the air that contribute to the greenhouse effect.

With that on top of boilers and smokestacks from manufacturing also make up approximately 30 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States from commercial and industrial use (according to the EPA).

Looking at each of these three major points, they all have wastefulness in common: wasted energy (from lights and electronics to building material, their construction, and maintenance over time), wasted supplies, and wasted time at the cost of fossil fuels and clean air. Therefore, the solution can be obtained by inverting the problem.

Take energy efficiency for example. By now, it should already be common knowledge that switching to energy efficient bulbs with motion sensors that can detect when a room is empty (thus turning the lights off in case of human forgetfulness), setting automatic shut downs for computers to keep them from vampiring electricity, and keeping a better eye on climate control settings can make a sizable dent in your office’s energy costs.

And assuming you have the money for remodeling or constructing a new space entirely, focusing on insulation to ease the burden on heaters and air conditioning units and using solar panels to offset dependency on the grid are also feasible solutions.

There’s plenty you can do with just the physical aspect of your office space, all detailed in the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (or LEED) program.

On the topic of managing office supplies and resources, it’s just a matter of using them wisely. Instead of printing out emails, just save them in virtual folders. It’s 2017 after all -- and you can back them up to the Cloud in case anything happens to your local computer. If you do need to print, make sure to use both sides of the page; if you’re not handing the document off to anyone and simply need physical printed notes, keep scrap paper on hand that still has a blank side. If it’s just used for notes anyway, it doesn’t have to look pretty (and the paper’s used twice, cutting down on cost and waste).

PAK'R MAGAZINE | 15

Instead of throwing away old computers, find a place to either resell them or donate them, whether it’s your employees that are lacking a computer at home or to the local school district, library, or really anywhere else that needs a computer (just be sure to wipe the memory on the local drives). The same goes for printers, fax machines, and really anything else that’s outdated but still functional.

Conversely, instead of just buying new computers, installing new components and swapping out the old ones can help increase the longevity of a single system.

While that requires a bit more technical know-how, this could also be an interesting avenue to train some of your staff the basics of computer hardware -- an on-demand skill that’ll only grow as business becomes more and more reliant on machines and the digital world of the Internet.

Speaking of the Internet, more people than ever are becoming telecommuters, working remotely across the country (or even, the world). Though some people prefer being in-office, every telecommuter is another person (and car) off the road, lowering carbon dioxide emissions and helping to keep our highways from being cramped and cluttered. It’s one thing to drive a car from Point A to Point B as efficiently as you can. It’s another thing entirely to attempt the same drive, yet sit an extra half an hour in stop-and-go traffic with the engine still running that whole time. Your employees’ fuel budgets will thank you.

Interestingly enough, Global Workplace Analytics has compiled statistics of over 4,000 different studies on agile (that is, telecommuting) arrangements, citing that allowing employees to work from home improves job satisfaction, reduces attrition, increases productivity, and saves employers money… just to name a few benefits.

16 | PAK'R MAGAZINE

Again, when it comes to changing the world for the better, it’s a matter of solving long-standing problems and keeping the heart of innovation pumping.

By reviewing how your company does business regularly, gauging employee concerns and complaints, and being aware of what your competition is doing, you can easily stand a few legs above the rest if you set out to it. But everyone has to start somewhere, and even the smallest changes can start a cascade of sweeping, positive change.

Haste (and Resistance to Change) Makes Waste Let’s apply this same rationale to a specific industry. We’ve already talked about food production, but let’s talk another hot topic issue: medical expenses.

Earlier in March, a photo was buzzing around of a hospital bill for childbirth in a Pennsylvania hospital in 1943. Over the course of the new mother’s stay at McKeesport Hospital, the bill was only $29.50 (or about $415.40 in 2017 dollars) for the delivery, room and board, anesthetic, lab exams, and other drugs that were administered during the stay.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in 2014, the median costs for delivery and care for the mothers was about $13,525 on top of care for the newborns (about $3,660). Even comparatively with 2017 dollars for childbirth in the 1940s, that’d be about a 4137% increase which far exceeds currency inflation between the two periods.

In fairness, a lot more goes into

childbirth now than it did in the 1940s: there’s more thorough tests to ensure the health and safety of mother and child, better medicine and anesthetics, and better procedures to keep infant mortality rate down while also making sure the mother the survives the process too. Between 1940 and 1950 in the United States, maternal mortality rate was about 300-400 deaths per 100,000 live births. Today, it’s about 18-19 deaths per 100,000 live births -- a number that’s been worsening since the 1970s and ‘80s where we were down to about nine deaths.

While much better than the earlier 20th century, the steady increase in maternal death is most commonly attributed to obstetricians coming up with different ways to treat (and sometimes, accidentally kill) their patients through the overuse of Csections that resulted in infection or blood loss, forceps, deep sedation, and others. The medical field is not immune to innovation and constantly re-evaluating the usefulness of traditional procedures, but without revisiting what works and what doesn't (or, more dangerously, continuing

Source: CyroCell International

to use techniques that are more harmful than useful), the cost is beyond dollars and cents, but lives lost that could’ve otherwise been saved.

Getting rid of ineffective and outdated treatments isn’t the only way we can eliminate medical waste. While I’m no doctor or medical researcher, from a business standpoint, here are a few healthcare providers can look into slashing their own costs, in turn passing savings onto their patients: Compare pharmaceutical prices regularly and find the least expensive, yet most effective drugs available. While easier said than done, hyperinflation of any good encourages competition to swoop in and undercut greedy companies while still making money as production costs are still lower than revenue. Ideally, pharmaceutical companies will get the message that price gouging healthcare providers and their patients isn’t a sound business practice.

Provide better care and “customer service” resulting in less accidental injury or death. Not only does this help preserve life, hospital administration can preserve their budget by keeping legal costs down; this is also an extension from getting rid of ineffective treatments and procedures.

Provide only necessary lab work and testing instead of offering patients endless options. Naturally, healthcare professionals should only test for what’s necessary, but ordering unnecessary tests or if anything goes wrong down the line (that is, testing is improperly conducted or samples not being viable enough and requiring repeat testing) is just a waste of time, money, and energy.

After all, that MRI machine doesn’t run on dreams and rainbows.

Invest in medical research that will help drive your own costs down. Sometimes you need to spend money to make money. If the hospital in question specializes in certain procedures, finding ways (either with its own staff or by supporting third-party researchers) to mitigate costs through research investment gives a bit more control, instead of just relying on the market to sort itself out. You can even encourage charity-type events to raise money for certain disease researchers such as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge established in 2014 which has generated tens of millions of dollars of donations.

Even if you don’t work in the healthcare industry, these same principles of evaluating your procedures and practices and cutting out the waste (especially if it’s outdated and a new system is already in place) as well as gearing a focus on innovating both your services and products can be applied to varying degrees of success. As consumers more than ever are committed and interested in teaming up with their favorite businesses, tapping into this energy can lead to some crazy, yet widely effective, results. The ALS Challenge, for instance, raised almost $42 million over the summer of 2014 with 739,000 new donors, more than double than the fiscal year ending in January 2013 prior.

No matter what your goal is, all it takes is a good idea and selling it to anyone willing to listen. When it comes to renewable sources of energy, human passion and enthusiasm -- especially when one feels they’re making a positive impact -- is boundless. With the right motivation, that nearly infinite energy source is yours for the taking.

Article By: Scott Borhauer

PAK'R MAGAZINE | 17

Social Sustainability: How Protecting Our Planet Starts By Helping Each Other What can one person do to make a difference in a world’s worth of environmental problems? Quite a bit, actually -- and we’re not just talking about turning the lights off when you’re leaving a room or making sure to sort your recycling. Major changes come from grassroots efforts and social sustainability is no different. It’s true: by helping our neighbors, we can also help our earth in more ways than one.

SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY

EC ON OM IC

Viable

T

EN

M

19 | PAK'R MAGAZINE

Equitable

Sustainable

N RO

While the triad above represents the ideal of sustainable practices, pairing these concepts form a variety of topics that help contribute to that ideal. For instance, the “social” and “economic” parts focus on topics like human and labor rights, social equity, and community development; “social” and “environment” focus on liveability, health equity, and placemaking (that is, utilizing a community’s natural assets as inspiration for its development); and “environment” and "economic" focus on viability,

Bearable

VI

Enter the concept of social sustainability, a sub-discipline of the larger sustainable living movement -- well, depending on who you ask. There are two main schools of thought when it comes to social sustainability. The first (and most common) suggests a triad of concepts, where social sustainability is balanced with environmental and economic concerns.

SOCIAL EN

For years now, you’ve probably heard the term “sustainability.” With climate change, pollution, and wasteful consumerism, it’s hard not to hear about the backlash to these phenomena. After all, if there’s no world, where are you going to put all your stuff? But even then, trying to be sustainable might seem a daunting task. How can one person (that is, you, reader) make a lasting difference?

How can you save a world whose oceans are rapidly acidifying as carbon dioxide levels break new records, whose air is filled with greenhouse gases, some of which are entirely toxic for human lungs?

corporate (social) responsibility, and human adaptation that favors balance between nature and civilization.

The second, more recent model (as seen on the next page) argues that social sustainability actually encompasses all domains of sustainability, from the ecological and cultural to the economic and political. In other words, social sustainability is defined by human embeddedness in an environment and the relationships our communities form with the natural habitats that surround them.

Some places try to live and develop in harmony with the environment, using it as inspiration to plan everything from businesses and zoning laws to architecture and local culture. Other places couldn’t be bothered to care, mowing down forests in

favor of cookie-cutter homes whose only identity is based on the contracted construction company that outbid all the rest. Where the former not only is more appealing to the eye (as well as to the skin, lungs, heart, and other organs, given natural healthfulness correlates with our own), it paints a picture of humanity that reveres the Earth we’ve been given, rather than a parasitic species that destroys anything that isn’t immediately useful to us, ever-consuming what resources we have left.

Regardless of your own concerns (or lack thereof) about the environment and planet, sustainability, at its core definition, refers to “the ability to maintain something at a certain rate or level.” When it comes to business and development, companies that can sustain themselves will survive across generations where those that can’t are

Production & Resourcing Accounting & Regulation ECONOMICS Wealth & Distribution 25% Tech & Infrastructure Exchange & Transfer Consumption & Use Labor & Welfare ECONOMICS

Constructions & Settlements Materials & Energy ECOLOGY Emission & Waste 25% Habitat & Food Flora & Fauna Place & Space Water & Air ECOLOGY

Law & Justice Security & Accord POLITICS Ethics & Accountability Dialogue & Reconciliation Organization & Governance POLITICS Communication & Movement 25% Representation & Negotiation

Belief & Meaning Inquiry & Learning Health & Wellbeing CULTURE Memory & Projection Gender & Generations Engagement & Identity CULTURE 25%Recreation & Creativity

simply… well… unsustainable.

Simply put, a rampant misuse of one’s resources is sure to lead to their downfall. You can’t save up for retirement if you waste all your money; you can’t live in a house whose space has been squandered and filled up with useless things -- or conversely, left to rot and fall apart.

Instead, it is important to find ways to keep your company alive and healthy. In the marketplace of the 21st century, a surefire way to do this is to ensure the health of those around you, whether your neighbors next-door or your community, county, or state as a whole. But where do you begin?

The (Triple) Bottom Line Sustrana, a sustainability management software development company, hit the nail on the head in a post from 2015 about the importance of factoring in the “Triple Bottom Line,” a framework that puts corporate social responsibility at the forefront of one’s business practices:

“Just as environmental and economic factors of the TBL are calculated, so too must be human factors. From a corporate per-spective, social sustainability is about under-standing [the] impacts on people and society. It is about assessing potential harms, needs, and desires. It is also about proactive contributions toward human development and well-being now and in the future.”

sustainability interrelate with the economic and environmental dimensions. For example, a large part of individuals’ social sustainability depends on the quality of their employment. This includes how a company treats them, how fulfilling their job is, or whether they make enough money to support a decent quality of life.” If you think about it, it doesn’t require too much thought to understand that by giving your Whereas corporate social responsibility is employees a job where they feel valued a company’s moral and ethical agenda and are making a difference, that this with regards to how they’ll give back to attitude may spread into other aspects their customers and affected of their lives, not just in the workplace. communities, social sustainability takes forms in human rights, fair labor practices, After all, just as misery loves company, and assuring the health and safety of happiness can be just as infectious. employees and consumers alike.

Assuming you’re a business owner, you Outside the corporate sphere, these ideas can apply these ideas to your own extend into the realm of philanthropy and company simply by being more aware of volunteerism, community engagement and the needs and concerns of your the concept of “good citizenship,” -- that employees, your customers, and the is, to take part in improving your town communities your brand inhabits. For not just for yourself, but all those who live instance, let’s say you manufacture in and rely on it. soccer balls and equipment.

Sustrana also argues that TBL factors into You’re not just making a sport product job quality: “The social aspects of or a toy, you’re making memories with

PAK'R MAGAZINE | 20

friends and family, you’re giving teams the equipment they need to practice and win, and -- depending on how active you are in your own community -- giving people the opportunities to succeed, whether it’s sponsoring a local soccer team or giving people jobs.

Even if you make kitchen accessories, clothing, computer keyboards, toolboxes, anything and everything in between, your product is more than just turning a tidy profit. It’s about giving people they want. Ask anyone, and you’ll find that all anyone truly ever wants is a happy future. You just have to figure out how to help be a part of that.

Stemming the Rising Tides Even if I were to explain sustainability solely in economic terms, the environment and its role in business is inevitable to discuss. If not in wasteful practices causing ill across the planet and billions of living creatures that inhabit it, these problems also create new opportunities for the smarter, forwardthinking entrepreneur. Before we get into that though, let’s talk about a major problem: climate change.

Like it or not, the Earth’s weather cycles are changing. Whether you believe it’s caused by humans or not doesn’t change the fact that native temperatures are fluctuating and atmospheric gas composition is thrown off balance. One of these major examples of such changes is mega weather, massive storm systems affected by a warming climate. In 2012, these freak storms caused over $120 billion worth of costs and damages in the United States alone, mainly revolving around Hurricane Sandy and a drought that swept across the Midwest.

21 | PAK'R MAGAZINE

While the costs with Sandy are written off as shorter term (that is, “simply” repairing the damage it caused and putting programs and projects in place to better prepare for the future), The Harvard Business Review published an article outlining longer term issues that affect business and human health:

use more environmentally-friendly materials.

We cannot rely on government mandates and tax subsidies to help preserve our planet, nor should we wait for that. And again, it doesn’t matter what your own beliefs are, the facts are still out there, clear as day: there are “Corn yields per acre [in 2012 due to problems that need solving and great the drought] fell 19 percent, food prices business people know how to provide rose, and water disappeared -- the solutions for these problems. When it Mississippi River may soon struggle to comes to social sustainability, these support commerce. Individual companies solutions can come in the forms of are feeling the bite [too]. Analysts at finding better ways to farm that require Morningstar estimate that input costs at less water yet produce a better yield or Tyson Foods will rise by $700 million -- making use of wasteful byproducts such more than its 2012 net income.” as plastics and electronics that can be either recycled or repurposed and Regardless of the federal government's reused. stance on environmental protections, we do not need the government to save us, You don’t have to own a business to but companies, communities, and make these changes either. As an individuals who are looking to solve individual, you can join a community these problems. In fact, despite the group that makes a difference some proposed roll-back of Obama-era EPA how, some way -- whether it’s feeding policies, the clean energy/green sector is the homeless or running a charity to still growing, whether it’s investment in clothe the less fortunate or help the new renewable energy technologies unemployed find jobs. or green construction companies that

You hear plenty of stories about how towns have used the “tiny house” craze as a way to build proper living spaces for those without homes (Dallas, Portland, and Detroit are some of these cities with a growing number following suit).

There are open-source startups like Precious Plastic that lets people build their own all-purpose plastic recycling machines or FarmBot that brings automated farming to your own yard.

All of these projects and programs started as ideas and if you have an idea that can help others, you have the potential to make something in demand that could assure your own future and security. But like I said before, when it comes to finding a future you want -one without sickness, poverty, or being left in want -- we cannot forget our coinhabitants on this spinning blue-green orb glistening in the sunlight.

With that, what have you done for your fellow humans? When your time inevitably comes to an end, what legacy will you leave? One that safeguarded the blues and greens that paint our skies, oceans, plains, and fields? Or one that will crumble into the dust left from a ravaged world, left to stoke the fires of short-sighted greed? Your choice and the livelihood of future generations depends on you just as you depend on others to make the same good decisions.

Are you a protector… or a parasite?

When left with those two options, it makes the choice more obvious, doesn’t it?

Article By: Anthony Magestro

PAK'R MAGAZINE | 22

Ecommerce Checklist: 15 Ways to Boost Online Sales and Traffic With how much ecommerce is growing, it’s important to know how to capitalize on this trend efficiently. Here you’ll find some tips and tricks on how to boost your online sales performance, from the nitty gritty of website design, to customer service and marketing.

ECOMMERCE CHECKLIST Building your business online has never been easier… well, once you get the basics down, that is. As the very nature of the beast changes yearly (or sometimes, multiple times a year), knowing the essentials keeps you and your website above the tumultuous digital waters. While certain strategies may change, it’s best to at least know where to begin -- and we’re here to help with that.

Though this checklist is not exhaustive (there’s plenty of books and websites dedicated to creating and maintaining a virtual storefront), it does serve as a good starting point in your own ecommerce endeavors. To keep things simple, we’ve divided it up into three main sections: site development and design (the back-end, technical stuff), the customer experience (the front-end, selling-your-wares stuff), and social media engagement (the above-and-beyond, nitty gritty advertising stuff).

With any luck, you’ll come away with some useful knowledge on how to build, run, and expand upon your digital brand.

Let’s get down to it.

SITE DEVELOPMENT AND DESIGN So let’s say you already have a domain and site up and running.

Whether you choose to host your own storefront or use a platform such as Shopify, Wordpress, Squarespace, or dozens of others, there are a few key factors to keep in mind while you build and design your digital storefront. The first of which is...

#1 - Keep Page Load Times Down Nothing annoys the denizens of the Internet more than slowloading web pages. In a world where instant gratification is the norm, having anything happen in less than an instant feels mindnumbingly slow -- even if it just takes five or six seconds in reality. If those seconds start getting into the double digits and your potential customers are already off to their second, third, or even fourth choice. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but the point remains: the longer it takes for your page to load, the more likely it is for your viewers to abandon your site.

Now sometimes page load speeds can’t be helped; sometimes a user has a shoddy Internet connection or inferior equipment at home that just doesn’t work as well as it ought to. You can’t really help that. But what you can help is by making sure your speeds are as low as possible. That doesn’t mean get rid of 24 | PAK'R MAGAZINE

every little feature on your website so that it’s virtually blank.

Just keep load speeds reasonable by optimizing images (PNGs are better than JPGs for Internet usage), having asynchronous embedded objects (such as Google ads, video players, and other non-text content that load after the page itself has loaded rather than at the same time), and making sure your web host can handle the amount of traffic you’re dealing with (if you’re going through a third-party hosting service, they’re more than happy to help gauge this need based on your own metrics).

Speaking of metrics, sites that load quicker generally rank higher in search engine algorithms, meaning your site is more likely to show up higher in search results than slower-loading competitors.

Want to know how fast you’re going? Google’s PageSpeed Insights page can test your site for you and give you helpful, customized suggestions on how to improve your load speed.

If you want to speed up the shopping process, there’s a few ways to do that too: offer default settings like shipping or payment options for returning visitors or having a plugin that guesses what kind of credit card is being used based on the numbers rather than relying on a manual selection. Digital retailing behemoth Amazon even has a one-click shopping option, allowing customers to instantly purchase whatever’s in their cart rather than jumping through all the hoops of billing and shipping information, relying on saved account info instead.

Whatever you can do to expedite and guide your customers to what they’re buying and how they’re buying it, the better off you and your website will be.

#2 - Check Your Pages for Browser Compatibility

and clean as possible will help keep pages from being cluttered, no matter if your customer is at their desk, on the couch, or out and about. Not only does this minimalism translate well across the various platforms, it also keeps load times down as well.

Just as speed is important, so too is making sure your site displays correctly in After all, no one likes trying to load a fullthe first place. Indeed, not all browsers scale website on a small-scale phone. interact with your website’s code the same way. With so many to choose from (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and plenty of others), making sure your pages work across multiple platforms is key to keeping yourself from alienating potential customers.

Aside from testing this out yourself by downloading the browsers you’re most concerned about, other sites like Browserling.com allow you to test your pages for different browsers and operating systems. A working page is a happy page -- and even happier potential customers.

Certainly, they’re useful when display various posts and news topics (if you’re in the business of selling information instead of physical products), but the average user may find these sliders to be confusing and problematic, not to mention bulky when it comes to loading pages. Not only does the site have to load all the images, but the container that houses them as well; the more images in the slider, the more data and code required to make sure it works, meaning more loading lag in the meantime.

Instead, keep things simple with a crisp header image and attention-getting headline. With the short attention spans of the average human, it’s better to get to the point than waste precious seconds with an auto-scrolling slider.

#5 - Use Text to Your Advantage: Include a Snappy Header, Purpose, Call-to-Action, and Testimonials

#3 - Optimize for Mobile Users Much like their stationary desktop counterparts, it’s duly important to ensure your browser displays correctly on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as it would your standard computer.

People are relying more and more on their phones for Internet searches and consuming information, overtaking PC browsers in some segments already.

Making sure your website looks as attractive on a tablet or phone screen as it would a computer monitor is increasingly important. Luckily, many templates (if you’re the type to buy premade website layouts) are already formatted for multiple device types.

standpoint -- that’s favoring static images instead of their revolving, multi-image counterparts.

#4 - Replace Your Homepage Slider with a Static Image

As speed is consistently the name of the game, less is naturally more when competing for higher search rankings.

While some sites prefer image and page Still, when it comes to modern interfaces, sliders, there’s a growing trend -- both keeping your site’s design as minimalist from a technical and visual design

In the same vein as opting for a static image instead of a slider, using features like a great header, a clear purpose, and call-to-action (i.e. buy this for x reasons, do this for y reasons) go a long way with the modern Internet consumer.

Moreover, by building testimonials and showcasing positive reviews, you help build your own social authority and proof that help people decide that whatever you’re selling is the best choice for them.

It’s obvious that you are going to have a good opinion of your product. People are savvy enough to look for the opinions of other customers just like them.

Aggregates through Yelp (if you’re a physical retailer) and Google searches PAK'R MAGAZINE | 25

also give quick glances that your company is the real deal. Great customer service starts with their first impressions, and those impressions are derived from how you keep your digital storefront. Whether or not it’s an uphill battle or a downhill slide to victory is up to you.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Now that you’ve got your site tweaked and primed for search engine optimization and putting your product in the eyes (and more importantly, the hands) of your customers, let’s talk about the overall experience and interactions and ways you can go about improving those.

#6 - Include Product Landing Pages to Help Customers Find What They Need While the homepage might be a great portal that customers can then go to wherever they need (imagine the lobby of a physical store), why not just drop them on the page (or to the aisle) they intended to go down anyway? Certainly, organic traffic (that is, customers who find your site through web searches) is great, but paid traffic (customers who click on a paid ad for your site based on a relevant, but not exact, search for your product) still has its role to play in growing your site’s digital popularity.

These tailored advertisements through services like Google Adwords allow you to choose subdomains on your site rather than just the homepage. Are you selling gardening supplies but find your flower planters are one of the more popular products? Make an advertisement tailored to those specifically and include a link right to that category. If you’re in the 26 | PAK'R MAGAZINE

business of news and media, you can apply the same strategy to different topics and columns in your publication.

Again (and we can’t stress this enough), success in online business stems from speed and performance. Getting a customer what they want as quickly as possible with quality goods and services is probably the most sound business practice you can think of. The opposite of that -- getting a customer what they don’t want as solely as possible with shoddy customer service and products -- will spell disaster. So… give them what they want!

#7 - Have a Search Option Available In case you’re not sure what they want (it’s okay, sometimes the customer doesn’t even know), always have a search option available. Access to site-wide searches rather than having to parse through long lists of categories and products speeds up the process exponentially.

Plus, with such an option available, you’ve given yourself another tool not only for customer satisfaction, but gathering important data as well that let’s you determine popular products and keywords that you can later use for search engine optimization or inventory management. Besides, why keep products around that take up value space and money if no one’s buying them?

Moreover, keep yourself from running out of products there seems to be a hot demand for based on these search metrics.

#8 - Be Honest About Extra Costs

Amazon and other retailers have trained customers to expect things like free shipping (even if “free” is only included with other services like member subscriptions or purchasing a certain value of goods to qualify). Still, even if you can’t avoid shipping costs, it’ll only damage your reputation to not be upfront with your customers about them.

Think about it: how would you like to be under the impression when you’re buying something for $25, but by the time you get to the checkout, it’s actually $45 with shipping ($60 if they want it the next day)?

If shipping costs are unavoidable and you’re unable to absorb them, do what you can to minimize them: research how your own packaging and shipping process works, how much you pay in materials and labor (if anything), or if you can outsource the process entirely. Dropshipping is popular for this very reason, letting you focus instead on maintaining your online store without the need for a physical inventory and the shipping headaches it can cause.

#9 - Offer Incentives, Discounts, or Sign-Up Bonuses When you can afford it, offering free incentives with newsletter sign-ups, discounts, and other bonuses or coupons are great ways to drive traffic to your site. Just like clipping coupons from catalogs bundled with the weekly newspaper, there are plenty of thrifty Internet shoppers scouring for deals.

Just as with targeted advertising that drops customers to specific areas on your site, discounts can help highlight popular products and categories as well.

You can even be more creative with flash sales or “deals of the day” that keep customers coming back for more --

especially if they’ve signed up for a newsletter that is sent to their email.

Be careful though: while discounts and other bonuses can do wonders, doing it too often might place your notifications squarely in the spam folder. Remember, you want to help your customer, not bombard and annoy them with filler they don’t actually need or have interest in (that in-site search bar is looking better and better though to avoid that, eh?).

#10 - Localize Your Content for Foreign Audiences If you’re trying to spread your reach beyond the English-speaking world, it might be worth the investment to localize your site to different regions. You might find that your product is popular with unintended segments in Germany, France, China, or Saudi Arabia. Having pages in these customers’ native languages can help build trust with these demographics as well as giving them a reason to traffic your site at all.

What good is a site anyway if you have no idea what the content says or what it’s trying to sell you? Keep this in mind for whatever language you’re using, especially your own native tongue.

percentage whereas e-checks don’t usually). And that’s not even accounting for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin that now (at least at the time of writing) are worth more than gold.

By doing your financial homework on your customers, you can help continue build their trust and expedite their shopping experience by offering them payment methods they’re familiar with and able to use. Again, if it’s all about building that trust, you don’t start by offering shady or barely-functioning means to make the transaction.

#12 - Troubleshoot Your User Experience Obviously you know what it’s like to be the owner of your business. But have you tried being a customer to it? Try troubleshooting your own site for yourself and take notes on what you like and dislike about the process. Is the newsletter bland or helpful? Does the checkout process work properly? Were you able to find what you were looking for quickly and easily?

When roleplaying as a customer, you can

gain your own hands-on insight that just reading feedback emails cannot fully encapsulate. If you want some extra perspectives from known sources, ask family and friends outside your usual quality testing team to try it out too.

They might come up with some notes your tried-and-true testers and yourself might have missed. Knowledge is power after all.

SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT You got your site up and you’ve tailored your customer experience to be efficient, helpful, and profitable. Neat! But now’s not the time to stop and rest on whatever success you’ve managed to accrue. This section is all about using social media to market and engage your customers, doubling down on boosting your site’s traffic.

#13 - Use Social Media to Spread Your Own Content It goes without saying that social media is a great way to reach out to people and

#11 - Support Multiple Methods of Payment Just like with the words you use on your site, having multiple means to make transactions is another wise decision.

Banking access in different countries notwithstanding, but different demographics might also favor different modes of commerce too. Some people might prefer PayPal while others like just using their credit and debit cards directly.

Some like echecks on recurring services without transaction fees (a lot of credit card processors charge a small PAK'R MAGAZINE | 27

their networks. Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Pinterest (among many others), there’s ways to tap into each audience and convert them into loyal customers. While which platform depends mostly on who your target demographic is and what you’re selling, they’ll nevertheless be another advertising space for your business and products.

their fans into yours. The same can be applied to other platforms as well.

Pinterest, for example, is great for Shopify referrals, whereas LinkedIn is a powerhouse when it comes to attracting the attention of colleagues and professionals in your sector (get their attention with relevant information and posts and then direct them to your products and services from there). Even if you wanted to start here and work backwards before you have a site, proactive consumer engagement on platforms like Twitter can help build hype for a new website, as well as gather some preliminary feedback and expectations from customers to help plan out the site’s design and what you have on offer.

#15 - Write Blog Posts that Feature Your Product and Niche

Much like discounts and newsletter, you don’t want to spam your audiences either. Still, these platforms are crucial to building exponential traffic, not to mention their own built-in advertising packages to help boost and sponsor your posts to new audiences.

#14 - Offer Samples to Social Media Influencers If you don’t have your own marketing team, offering samples to key social media influencers can help build your social authority and visibility too. For instance Instagram has tons of profiles that cater to specific niches who love following them for their photos and other images. Finding key influencers in that niche that can then showcase your products can help turn

28 | PAK'R MAGAZINE

Though pictures are said to be worth a thousand words, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t neglect the press and bloggers relevant to your own industries as well.

Having press releases and samples for high profile reviewers to create write-ups on can give you a much-needed boost in traffic as well.

Maybe you don’t want to hand out samples to fellow industry writers. Why not just market your product in your own blog posts? Not only does having your own corporate blog help drive traffic through relevant keyword searches (information nowadays is a valuable commodity just like other physical goods), it gives you a greater reach and more ways to interact with other sources of information in your industry and sector.

UPS, as an example, doesn’t only provide shipping services throughout the United States. It has its own online magazine Longitude that talks about logistics concepts for business owners, corporations, as well as individuals who are just interested in the latest trends.

Heck, you’re reading a corporate magazine right now that’s in part designed to help drive traffic to our own domains by helping provide access to interesting and useful information to our customers.

When it comes to boosting your online sales and website traffic, it’s all about creativity. Now that you know a few of the fundamentals, you have the tools and knowledge to start your own projects.

Whether you’re starting from scratch or looking for ways to improve an existing Internet store, you’ve at least got a few extra ideas now to play with and try out yourself.

Article By: Scott Borhauer