Throughout the month of November we will be running our “SMB blog series.” While SMB traditionally refers to “Small/Medium Business,” here at Volusion it has come to mean something else: “Small Made Big.” This month we will be sharing resources, tips, stats, and inspirations to help you turn your small ecommerce endeavor into something greater- something BIG!

If you’re a regular reader you’ve probably noticed that we run a Volusion success story about once a month. Each success story features a Volusion client that has made it big with their business. If you haven’t read them, here’s a quick summary of our most recent success stories, as well as the business lesson to take away from each story:

• HockeyShot
  In two years, JP Brun managed to create one of the busiest hockey training sites on the web. His clientele ranges from beginners to international hockey stars and his markets include the US, Canada, and all of Europe. Moving to Volusion’s platform gave his company the boost in efficiency that they needed to be able to grow the business by more than 300% last year.
  Business Lesson: Choosing the right tools can have a huge impact on the future of your business!
• AceTool
  In the three years that Maria Polidoro has had her online store with Volusion, it has climbed the search engine ranks and now is surpassing most of its competitors in the highly competitive industry of hand and power tools. Their SEO investments have paid off significantly!
  Business Lesson: Invest in your future! (more…)
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JP Brun is a 27 year-old lifelong hockey enthusiast from New Brunswick, Canada. He is also co-owner of one of the most popular hockey stores online. Because of their worldwide online presence, HockeyShot has almost become synonymous with the sport of hockey.

HockeyShot.com (and its Canadian counterpart HockeyShot.ca) offer more than 700 hockey training products to help hockey players of all levels hone their skills. We caught up to JP to discuss what has made HockeyShot so successful. Here’s the insight he shared with us:

Volusion: When did you first start HockeyShot.com as an online business?
JP: The HockeyShot.com online store with full product line-up started in 2007. We have been with Volusion since March of 2008.

Volusion: Why did you decide to change providers and move your online store to Volusion?
JP: We moved due to the frustration of always having to contact programmers to customize work for us to help meet our online store needs. Our last shopping cart simply did not have nearly enough features to operate efficiently. There were many tasks that required manual data entry and time with our old cart, which are now automated with Volusion’s cart.

Volusion has helped us become a much more efficient online store, and permit us to focus more on sales and marketing to grow our business. Since going with Volusion, our sales have increased over 300%.

Volusion: Wow, that’s a huge increase! Which Volusion features in particular do you think helped contribute to that growth? (more…)

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About once a month we sit down and decide which company we’d like to feature in a success story for our blog. This month one company stood out to us, because well… they’re standing out for pretty much everyone right now.

AceTool.com is a nationally known online retailer of hand and power tools and accessories and have been with Volusion since 2006. We spoke with Maria Polidoro, owner of AceTool.com, about her thriving business. Here is what we learned:

Volusion: Can you briefly describe your business for our readers?
Maria: Ace Tool is a leader in retail tool sales. We also do repairs and carry a huge array of accessories and parts.

Volusion: I understand that you have a retail store, tell us a little bit more about that.
Maria: I founded Ace Tool in 1983 in Wantagh, NY. It grew out of the desire to bring the best quality products and service to this community. We don’t just sell the best tools, we host demonstrations in our store, and repair everything on site. Our online business flourished from there with the help of some great partners like Volusion.

Volusion: Did you start out with Volusion or were you using another ecommerce provider previously?
Maria: Ace Tool actually went live in 2005, so we did move our online store to Volusion from another provider. We made this decision due to the fact that our previous provider charged us a percentage of every sale that we made through them.

Volusion: What role would you say Volusion has played in your success?
Maria: Volusion has made it easier to run our store with the ease of product uploads, the simple search engine optimization, and the abundance of features that make it quick and simple to get our products as visible as possible to our customers. (more…)

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20 Years ago Margie Greenberg got her start in the party planning industry. In her spare time she took cake decorating classes, learning how to make cakes and cookies for her family and friends that looked as good as they tasted. When Abbey graduated from college her older brother told her “You better sell Mom’s cookies!” and five years ago she started doing just that. Margie and Abbey opened www.flourpotcookies.com to sell decorative cookies and accessories. About two and a half years ago they moved their site to Volusion because of the greater flexibility they had when it came to making changes to their website and the 24/7 technical support they could get when they needed assistance. As Abbey explains, “Prior to using Volusion, we would have to pay someone to change a picture or add a product.  It just wasn’t cost effective. I like that I can update anything anytime and if I can’t figure something out, the tech support is very helpful.” Their customers benefit most from this freedom to make changes quickly and easily because they are always getting access to new products.

Less than a year ago they launched a whole line of new products- their corporate logo cookies. Margie and Abbey’s cookies have been featured on The Food Network, and Entertainment Tonight. They have garnered the praise of celebrities like Al Roker and have been featured at company events for FOX, Kenneth Cole, Jimmy Choo, Saks Fifth Avenue, Marriott, Federal Express and many more. They supplied specialty cookies for Madonna’s “Sweet and Sticky” national tour. The credentials go on and on! The Mother-Daughter duo has also written a popular cook book and always has a full schedule for their cookie making classes on weekends. Abbey comments, “We’ve had people come from Massachusetts to Texas for the workshops.  We have a cookie decorating book published- so the workshop is really a chance to take what you may have seen in the book one step further.” They even sell the same cookie cutters and accessories that they use to make their famous cookies so that you can bake like a Greenberg in your own home.

When asked what their customers liked best about their site Abbey states it is the ease of navigation and picture heavy content that keeps them coming back. (Although, it probably also has something to do with the mouth watering cookies.) Abbey’s comments bring to light an important Volusion feature- cost effective bandwidth. The Volusion platform is a great choice for sites with rich picture content because the more pictures your site has, the more bandwidth you can use up each month. Unlike hosting companies that cap you at a certain amount of bandwidth per month Volusion allows you to use as much bandwidth as your site needs and only charges you a minimal fee per gigabyte (GB) of bandwidth you go over your plan during the month. Oppositely, there are hosting companies that fall at the other extreme- offering your hundreds of GBs of bandwidth with poor reliability in their hosting services. Volusion provides only premium managed hosting as part of their monthly plans while allowing you to use the bandwidth your business needs to run. Margie and Abbey have certainly benefited from this freedom and reliability, with almost 900 product photos on their site for customers to browse.

Despite the size and fame of their business Margie and Abbey run www.flourpotcookies.com like a small personal family business. They match wedding invitations to create custom favors for no additional design charge. Any cookie coloring can be substituted for a different shade at no cost. Each cookie is individually wrapped with stylish packaging. Everything about their cookies makes the customer feel like they were designed specifically for them, because well… they were!

-Kate Pierce eCommerce Specialist

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Five years ago Nancy Jaeger started selling bridal and wedding accessories online. With everything from wedding dresses and jewelry to attendant favors and cake toppers on her site www.shopforbridal.com essentially the only thing Nancy does not sell to help achieve the perfect wedding is the groom! Nancy stays ahead of the competition by going to bridal shows nation-wide and making sure she stays at the forefront of the latest trends and styles. This dedication has paid off! Since switching from Miva to Volusion about three years ago Nancy has had almost 12,000 orders. As Nancy explains, “We needed more functionality, inventory features, ability to customize, and reporting. Every function you want with Miva is a plug-in.  Every time I installed a new plug-in (all from different developers) there was a fear that something could go wrong; and there is very limited support.”

She made the decision to move her site over to Volusion and has fallen in love with the product editing features, ease of adding new products, ability to set up discounts/coupons, the advanced phone order page, and customizable shipping options. Her favorite features, however, are the quick and easy reporting features like the Return on Investment (ROI) tracker.

Nancy’s brides also benefit from the Volusion software. As she explains “Customers love the reviews- being able to read what other brides think of the products. The one page checkout is a great feature also. It makes it very easy for them to buy.” These benefits to her customers are more than icing on the cake though- they are essential. A reason many online businesses like wedding sites fail is because the more important a purchase is, the more reassuring customers need before they feel confident enough to purchase. A bride-to-be is not going to go online and order just any dress or accessory, she needs to know that that product she is choosing is going to be everything she ever imagined it would be. Nancy is there for her brides every step of the way- offering free expert advice before customers even purchase and promotions like “super sale” items and free shipping when they are ready to make their selections.

With about 14 years of experience in the industry Nancy certainly knows what she is talking about when it comes to wedding fashion, but after these last five years running her online store she is definitely getting a reputation as an online business guru as well. Satisfied customers all over the country are offering up a toast to Nancy and www.shopforbridal.com. So what is Nancy’s advice to other online store owners?  She offers two suggestions:

• “Look at all of your options before you choose your online store hosting. Remember that the quality of your hosting will reflect the quality of your business. The last thing you need is your entire website going down due to cheap hosting.”

• “Get a professionally designed web site.  I have used the designers at Volusion to customize the look and feel of my web site and they did a fantastic job. The prices were reasonable and the design was absolutely beautiful!”

-Kate Pierce eCommerce Specialist

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