Tessa Luu owns the successful home fashion site www.insideavenue.com and was looking to start a spin off site selling interior fabrics. Tessa tried several options before choosing Volusion for www.insidefabric.com. In 2000, she paid a developer $35,000 to build a website from scratch. “The site ran ok but it was very difficult for us to upgrade/maintain it. We then migrated to the Yahoo platform. The main store we have there is doing ok, but everytime we tried to do something we have to pay our developer to do it. Not only did it cost money, it is also time consuming. Yahoo store is built using

RTML, a propriety language, which you really have to learn and who has time for that?”

“When we tried to develop our fabric site, the Yahoo store does not have the functions and features that we need. We spent a few thousands and a few months on it then finally have to give up. We find that as a small business company, our options are very limited. That is, we don’t have the big budget to develop a custom solution, so we end up with a platform like Yahoo that is very limited in scope.”

“I was beating my head against the wall trying to get Yahoo Store to work with my fabric store. It was taking 4 days to upload just 5000 items, plus the database editing process was just unbearable. Then I went on line, Googled ‘e-commerce solutions’ and found Volusion. I bought the plan and worked on it over the weekend, and in one weekend I was able to do what I couldn’t do with Yahoo store for four months, by myself, and I’m not that technical. Our site was up and running in two weeks (most of the time was spent working on our product database).”

Although Tessa’s site is new, the signs are encouraging. “I am so impressed with the performance on this site so far. We’ve been live only for 3-4 weeks, and already we got over 40 orders! While this is not enough to pay the bill yet, we never get this on our Yahoo Store! The most important thing is that 60% of our traffic comes from organic, which I contribute to your SEO features. Having that built in, and making it so easy to put in meta-title, meta-tag, meta-descriptions as well as having the product name on the URL is so critically important. I strongly feel that once we get our off-site SEO done, the performance will be tremendously improved.”

Tessa’s plans do not stop with www.insidefabric.com. “We plan to have about 4 more niche sites built, all of which complement our core business, which is home furnishings. We feel having a niche site devoted to one single category is the best way for us to get organic ranking. This is why I was so excited about Volusion. It is by far the most economical package, not to mention the most robust package around. I strongly recommend it for small businesses particularly. I prefer to do things myself rather than hire it out, and Volusion is the perfect package for that.”

Michelle Greer, Marketing Specialist
http://www.volusion.com

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Your logo seems like such a small part of your online store. After all, your customers are looking at your products, right? A logo is an afterthought.

Your company’s logo is the most prominent form of branding your store will have. A logo can go on a receipt, a letterhead, a t-shirt, banner, as well as every page of your online store. It is also typically in one of the more prominent places website users look according to eye-tracking studies. It’s how your customers identify you.

What should you consider when choosing a logo?

Your customers can’t see if you choose to wear a suit or t-shirt, cargo pants, and Birkenstocks. They don’t know if you or your employees are country or city dwellers. They see your site. Ensuring your logo matches what you are all about will set the cornerstone for creating a solid brand people will be able to trust.

If you are a Volusion customer, you can purchase a logo design for $495.

Michelle Greer, Marketing Specialist
michelle_greer(at)volusion.com
http://www.volusion.com

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After graduating from UC Berkeley, Adam Guthrie realized that he would not be happy with his career working for someone else. “Since I had some bartending experience (mostly as my fraternity’s social chair for a couple of semesters), I decided that retailing bar supplies for the at-home enthusiast was an underserved niche that I had the potential to take advantage of. After visiting a variety of discussion boards frequented by other storefront owners, and doing some research on my

own, I concluded that the Volusion platform would suit my needs best due to its professional appearance, flexibility, and automation features.”

Adam started off by listing his products on higher traffic sites while his search engine rankings were being built. “In the early stages of HomeBarSource.com’s launch, we relied solely upon price comparison sites such as Shopzilla, Froogle, and Shopping.com to provide leads to potential customers. Within a few months, the major search engines began to provide the website’s pages with higher page ranks in the search results due to the SEO capabilities of the Volusion platform. As revenue increased, we began to purchase ad-space and links to our store on high ranking websites, which within a few more months helped HomeBarSource.com reach top-10 (and in some cases, top-3) rankings for our major targeted keywords. We’ve also added a Drink Recipe informational section on our website, which has helped our site become indexed for even more related keywords and to increase our page rank due to an increase in the text:code ratio.”

Adam’s had so much success with homebarsource.com, he decided to open another store using Volusion’s platform, kitchenandrestaurant.com. Adam is optimistic about his new prospect. “While the sales and product line of HomeBarSource.com continue to increase, Kitchen and Restaurant appears to be gaining enough momentum to indicate the potential for an even greater success than our first venture.”

Michelle Greer
michelle_greer(at)volusion.com
http://www.volusion.com

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Although the two took their first scuba lesson by accident, Phil Ellis and his son Brad quickly fell in love with scuba diving. “As soon as I went underwater for the first time, I was hooked. Both Brad and I began immediately thinking how we might make a living doing that great sport,” said Phil. After becoming a more active diver, he decided to quit his job in industrial quality improvement and manufacturing process control to open a scuba shop in Decatur, Alabama. When the travel industry came near to a dead halt after

September 11th, their brick-and-mortar store ended up not fairing so well.

Rather than just close up shop, Phil decided to take his business online with Dive Sports. He and his son had some success with a website they had built from scratch in 2002. After experiencing some growth, they soon realized they needed something more robust to maintain a sustainable business model. A friend had recommended Volusion and they set up the live store in January 2008.

Since opening their Volusion store, Phil and the crew at Dive Sports has since reached out to the online community in scuba forums, chat boards, and blogs. Phil even started his own blog to discuss scuba products and tips. By reaching out to the community online, Phil developed an edge over his bigger, less personable competitors. “No matter how much our internet business grows, we are still just a bunch of scuba divers that love the sport and love sharing our knowledge and information with our customers. We like for our customers to think of us as their local scuba store, no matter where they live,” says Phil.

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James “El Tigre” Booker felt robbed back in 2001 when his four putt putt wins in one year was dubbed “the Booker Slam” rather than a Grand Slam. “It shouldn’t matter that they weren’t all in the same calendar year. I held all four titles at once. That should count for something,” he said then.

Tigre faces an uphill battle, as he has not proven as dominant as in previous years. Some speculate that his putt putt skills have declined since leaving his first coach and marrying his bikini model/nanny girlfriend. Some say he’s lost his swing. Tigre vehemently denies anything of the sort.

Booker decided that 2008 would be the year to prove his critics wrong. However, after the first day of the Volusion Masters, Booker’s name is nowhere on the leader board. “I just lost my concentration. Tomorrow is another day.” At one point, geek/marketing ninja Michelle Greer took a picture of the golfer in midswing. The incident triggered an outburst by Tigre, who demanded that Greer be escorted out of the tournament.

“He’s been doing this crap for years. If I let it get to me, I wouldn’t be doing my job,” she said.

Will Tigre come up with one of his legendary comebacks this weekend? We shall see. Check out/comment on Day One’s highlights on Flickr.

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