Kyle Hungate at Hungate Business Services decided it was time to stop relying on the phone and purchase orders and time to bring his business online.Initially, Kyle just wanted to use the internet to take orders. He had no intention of pushing his business online. “Going online for us was more to capture receivables from our existing client base faster using Volusion’s shopping cart software in conjunction with accepting credit cards. When customers ordered supplies from us before using traditional methods i.e. check, it wasn’t uncommon for us to wait over 45 days to get paid. We chose

Volusion over other shopping carts on the market because of the simplicity to setup the store—none of our staff had any real web experience. We evaluated other carts but without question Volusion was the easiest to evaluate and the step by step ‘how to’ movies were invaluable,” said Kyle.

Kyle got some unexpected results from using Volusion to open his online store. “We never planned really to sell beyond our client base initially! We thought we would just tell our clients about the site and try to solve our problem with account receivables–we estimate that 60% of our sales so far have been clients outside our normal customer base.”

Kyle turned to Volusion’s design team to make his site, www.hbsx.com, look professional. “Communication and the experience with the design services was top notch, Yuri did a wonderful job. I sketched out what I thought would be a good storefront and he expanded it to make it functional and very appealing to the visitor,” said Kyle.

Hungate Business Services has big plans for the online space. “Our plans going forward are to grow and expand our online offerings to our clients as much as we can. We have seen the power of the online business and it’s definitely more of a focal point for us now. We hope in the very near future we can dedicate a team to serve our online community just as we have for our brick and mortar operations.”

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

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Corey Anderson started his first commercial janitorial business in 1993, and relied heavily on feather dusters as a “staple” in the industry. Over the years he struggled to find quality feather dusters, and when he did, they were extremely overpriced. As Corey’s business grew, he developed a supply division for his corporation (Alta Supply, Inc.), and sold these janitorial supplies nationally to cleaning companies. The product line

focused on hard-to-find supplies that janitorial companies used in their everyday operations. FeatherDusterDepot.com later became its own division as the demand for feather dusters was far greater than any other products that were sold.

Corey chose Volusion as his first choice for an ecommerce provider. He had no problem getting familiar with Volusion’s tools. “I don’t know any HTML, or coding whatsoever. The store was a breeze to set up. The tutorials were great, and it was fun to have a human going through the examples. His typos and corrections on the tutorials were humorous, and brought a certain ‘real-ness’ to the experience. We have received great feedback from customers stating how nice our site looks. Little do they know I had little to do with it–it is all Volusion. How wonderful it is to be up and successfully running from day one.”

Corey sells business to business as well as business to consumer. “For business to business clients, we rely on the coupon code and bulk discount scheduling for this. These two features are critical.”

Things are looking up for featherdusterdepot.com. What are Corey’s plans for his store? “Three things. 1)Grow 2)Grow 3)Grow. We have enjoyed being profitable from day one with Volusion, and we intend to grow by leaps and bounds. With continual SEO tuning, and other marketing strategies, we hope to be in the number one search position for our product–Feather Dusters.”

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

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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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Imagine walking into an electronics or jewelry store with some of the most amazing products you’ve ever seen. Everything this store offers is unique. The people seem kind. The prices are right. But the store itself is very drab and almost looks like a warehouse, and you can’t find anything. It makes you wonder where these people came from and if their goods were stolen or not.

A template is like that brick-and-mortar storefront. If it doesn’t live up to your products, you could be selling your store short. What is a template exactly though? The template is the frame of your website. It contains the categories and navigation. You can see an example of how templates vary in structure here.

What are some things to consider when choosing how and where your categories will be displayed?

1.) Color scheme: Different colors solicit different emotional reactions. Understanding what emotions your site is conveying is key. Since you will probably choose more than one color, it can be very helpful to be familiar with different color schemes together first before putting together a design. This color schemer gallery is very helpful in making this choice.

2.) Navigation: Do you want your navigation to be on the top, the left, or the right? Do you want both top and left navigation? Laying out information in a clear manner is key. Since navigation is ultimately controlled by you and your shopping cart software, making this choice before choosing a template can help give your store a more deliberate, unified feel.

3.) Having an About Us page, a prominent return policy, and contact information will determine if people can trust you or not. We don’t buy from people we don’t know. Where can you display this information so that people can find it?

4.) Customers who use your search functionality to find products are much more likely to purchase than those who are simply browsing. Make sure it is prominent for your users somewhere in your template.

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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