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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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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