Right now you’re probably shaking with anticipation like a kid on Christmas morning waiting to open his/her presents, but we need to give a little background for new readers.

I See Your “Cyber Monday” and I Raise You One “Green Monday” Most people know that Black Friday is the name given to the day after Thanksgiving, which traditionally marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season for retailers; and that it’s online equivalent (commonly referred to as Cyber Monday) is the following Monday. What most people do not know though is that while Black Friday is traditionally the busiest (and therefore most profitable) shopping day in the retail world, Cyber Monday is not the biggest online shopping day of the holiday season.

The biggest online shopping day of the year had not been given the honor of a snappy moniker until more recently: “Green Monday.” I know what you’re thinking: “Okay great, just tell us when Green Monday will be THIS year!” (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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They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but we just can’t wait to tell you about the Shop.org Summit! We were on the expo floor all three days meeting current enterprise clients and doing one-on-one consultations with prospective clients.

From what we heard, it sounds like many retail store owners took advantage of the online boot camp on Monday- the questions we got were insightful, and the knowledge of ecommerce was of the highest caliber. Countless good discussions were had about ecommerce best practices and the Volusion enterprise platform.

We had a surprisingly high number of store owners stop by to pick up our case studies and whitepapers, and we would like to congratulate Shahzad L. Paul again on winning the new iPod touch! (more…)

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It’s that time of the year again- the Shop.org Annual Summit is taking over Las Vegas.

Image compliments of www.shop.org/web/summit09

The summit is a three day event for retailers- starting today with an online ecommerce bootcamp, and concluding Wednesday after two days of intense workshops and seminars. Keynote speakers include Terry Lundgren, Chairman, President and CEO of Macy’s Inc. and John Donahoe, President and CEO of eBay Inc. just to name a few.

Volusion will be on the expo floor all three days. Expo hours are 5:30 pm-7:30 pm Monday, 10:00 am-5:30 pm Tuesday, and 10:00 am-3:00 pm Wednesday. Stop by booth #100 and see us to pick up your McCain/Obama online store case study, ecommerce whitepaper and enter our drawing for a chance to win a sleek new iPod touch!

We will be tweeting from the event, so make sure to follow us at www.twitter.com/volusion for Shop.org updates.

Members of the Volusion team- Adelle, Justin, and James will be there to answer any questions you may have. We look forward to meeting you!

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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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