“If you use Volusion and you have a pulse, you’ll love this app!”
“… a must have for any Volusion store owner”
“Great app! Love it!”
… so we’ve got that going on, but we would never forget our Android-using Volusion brethren. Today, their day has come!
Brand Labs is proud to introduce Volusion Snapshot for Android! In all honesty, it’s been available (for FREE) in the Android Market for a little while now, but we were kinda basking in the afterglow of the first app’s success, so we thought we’d spread the good news around a little to keep the glow going. The problem is that winter’s starting to get us down and we find ourselves in need of some positive reinforcement, so we’re fishing for compliments. Lucky for us, people are already saying nice things about the new Android app…
“Basic and perfect.”
“Thank you! …awesome”
“Gold!”
“What a great App! I love the ability to check in on my store so easily. Thanks Brand Labs”
“This is great, thanks!”
So there you have it. Two great tools for tracking your Volusion store’s revenue when you’re on the go, whether you’re an iPhoner* or an Androider**. Enjoy them as our (FREE) gift to you!
* We don’t believe “iPhoner” is actually a word and frankly, it sounds vaguely dirty. We apologize for its use.
** “Androider” is clearly not a word, but at least it doesn’t sound dirty***.
Anecdotal evidence shows that AutoResponderMax delivers a 7% – 17% conversion rate.
Okay. That was kind of an abrupt lead in, but we wanted to make sure you got the message in case you’re one of those people who only reads the first paragraph of anything. Anyhoo, now that we’ve got that out of the way…
AutoResponderMax is the autoresponder that Brand Labs created specifically for Volusion. It’s a fully automated, multi-featured direct marketing machine and so far, it’s enabled our clients to send over one million emails directly to their customers. It’s easy, it’s affordable and it works around the clock. It gathers product reviews, sends customized sales pitches and a bunch of other stuff to help you keep in touch with your client base. It can also help you to reclaim sales lost to abandoned carts and anecdotal evidence shows that AutoResponderMax delivers a 7% – 17% conversion rate.
There are plenty of great ways to distinguish yourself from your competition. Some are expensive and time-intensive and some are completely affordable and just call for a bit of creativity. Today, we’d like to talk about an idea that falls squarely into the second group.
One of our longtime clients, Hot Dog Collars, has a completely adorable site. Seriously. First of all, it’s pretty much devoted to dog collars, so that’s pretty cute already. Second, its mascot is a delightful, google-eyed cartoon dog that our in-house illustration team created just for them. See? Adorable. So when the time came to build an identity for their brand, Hot Dog collars knew just what they wanted: seasonal headers featuring their official spokesdog. Since that time, we’ve created a whole bunch of seasonal and holiday headers for them, each one featuring that same smiling mutt. On the brandbuilding expense spectrum, this is a pretty affordable option and it offers a lot of bang for your buck, especially if you have a lot of repeat business.
Click through to see a gallery of our Hot Dog Collar headers. They’re delightful!
… like, if you had to grow some tomatoes before April 20th or if you have an aquarium that needs to be really well lit before May. Basically, if you have anything that needs to be really well lit, Sunshine Systems can hook you up. They offer a wide variety of lighting for everything from hobby LED systems to that special something that your average basement gardener might need to make their secret basement tomatoes big, green and sticky… you know… if they’re growing the sticky, green kind of tomatoes.
In addition to designing and building Sunshine Systems’ new Volusion template, we also designed a billboard for them. It’s currently appearing along roadsides in the Chicagoland area. It features some of those secret, basement tomatoes we were talking about… but what if it doesn’t? What if everything that we believe to be true is nothing more than a computer simulation like in The Matrix? Like… what if we only think we designed the billboard, but actually we’re lying motionless in a lab somewhere while some alien scientists plant false memories of designing billboards and Volusion sites? What if we’re not an ecommerce company at all, but just a bunch of human slaves trapped inside a hellish experiment from which there is no escape but we totally don’t know it because the aliens are keeping us sedated with an implanted digital reality? Whoa…
Louis C.K. is a stand-up comic and the star of Louie, a critically acclaimed comedy series that will soon be entering its third season on FX. He also became a millionaire in under two weeks this past December.
Famously independent, C.K. doesn’t just star in his series, he also writes, directs and edits it. Knowing that, it isn’t all that surprising to hear that he chose to produce his most recent concert film (Louis C.K. Live at the Beacon Theater) by himself. What was surprising was his decision to distribute it himself, exclusively, online – without any digital rights management protection (DRM), and (bolder still) without iTunes.
C.K. released the video through his own custom-built website on December 10. It sells at the rock-bottom price of $5 and as of C.K’s last public statement on December 21, the video had earned $1,006,996.17.
… and that was two weeks ago. It’s pretty likely that he’s doubled that by now.
Of course the success of this endeavor is due largely to C.K’s talent and massive popularity, but it could never have been achieved without the magical power of ecommerce, and he isn’t the only artist who’s exploiting that magic, with and without the assistance of The Man.
More artistic adventures in ecommerce after the jump…
Google has produced their 2011 Google Zeitgeist report. The report takes Google’s amazing collection of data to show just what people across the globe cared about in 2011. We can only assume that the appearance of Rebecca Black has more to do with people looking forward to Friday (the day) as opposed to actually seeking out her mind-grinding pop hit of the same name. (We need to believe that in order to retain or faith in humanity.)
We’re crazy about Google and searching in general. We’re always searching for things. Ask anyone. Our friends call us “Google McSearchypants.” We love search so much that watching this video makes us a little verklempt. (Google it.)
Here’s wishing you (and everyone) a healthy, happy and search-worthy 2012!
There are circumstances under which it is possible to profit by lying to your customers. It’s not a practice that we endorse as an over-arching strategy, but there’s no way to argue with the success of ThinkGeek.com’s annual April Fools’ Day of Being Big Fat Jerkface Liars by Teasing Us With Amazing Things That We Can Never Actually Have Because They’re Totally Made Up. That’s right. Once a year, the nerdy sadists at ThinkGeek create an entire line of fictional products to tease their clientele with dreams of what might have been. Recent offerings include delicacies like Squeez Bacon® and edible gummy iPhone cases alongside innovations that would definitely simplify our lives if they existed, like the Original Shirt Plate (from the makers of Bowl Pants and Sock Spoon). Each of these enticing lies is worthy of our attention, but today, we’d like to talk to you about the iCADE.
The iCADE (shown here) was featured in 2010′s ThinkGeek April Fools’ product line. As a desktop replica arcade cabinet that acts as a dock for your iPad and also allows you to play retro videogame hits, the iCADE is clearly the most important consumer product in all of recorded human history – the one hitch being that it wasn’t an actual product. It was just a joke (a cruel, cruel joke). Unfortunately, the fact that it didn’t exist didn’t prevent the iCADE from making the internet rounds with lightning speed as salivating geeks across the globe had their hopes raised and dashed like nerdy dominoes when, upon rushing to buy this Holy Grail, they found that there was nothing to buy.
Don’t worry. There’s a happy ending after the jump…
A wise man once said “it is better to give than to receive.“ Clearly that man never received an Xbox, but it’s still a nice thought, so we’re gonna go with it.
In honor of this season of giving, we’ve decided to give you the greatest gift of all: we’re going to enable your obsessive need to keep a constant eye on your Volusion store’s revenue by giving youVolusion Snapshot!
Volusion Snapshot (currently available in the iTunes app store) is a completely free and easy way to watch your sales add up during the holidays and throughout the year. We created Volusion Snapshot to be secure and simple and to provide you with the one piece of data we know you’re looking for: revenue. Volusion Snapshot provides current (refreshable) daily revenue figures as well as monthly data, annual data and year-over-year comparisons. Now you can watch your bottom line while you’re on the go without having to constantly log in to your Volusion dashboard. We’re giving you the gift of freedom.
… AND if you happen to have multiple Volusion stores, we have even more good news. Volusion Snapshot will allow you to stay logged in to each of them simultaneously so you can see your online empire expanding no matter where you are.
Brand Labs is dedicated to ecommerce and we’re always working to make it better. Volusion Snapshot is our gift to the entire Volusion community with the hope that it makes your lives a little easier. It comes with our very best wishes for a joyous, peaceful and prosperous 2012!
In late December we offered our very own holiday gift to the entire Volusion community: Volusion Snapshot – a revenue tracking iPhone app (available for FREE in the app store). People seem pretty happy about it, if the reviews are any indication…
… like, if you had to grow some tomatoes before April 20th or if you have an aquarium that needs to be really well lit before May. Basically, if you have anything that needs to be really well lit, 
Louis C.K. is a stand-up comic and the star of Louie, a critically acclaimed comedy series that will soon be entering its third season on FX. He also became a millionaire in under two weeks this past December.
There are circumstances under which it is possible to profit by lying to your customers. It’s not a practice that we endorse as an over-arching strategy, but there’s no way to argue with the success of 
