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Archive for the ‘Volusion Apps and Plugins’ Category
 Do you have brick and mortar stores in addition to your Volusion store? Are you a manufacturer (with a Volusion site) who’d like to tell your customers where to find your products in the real world? Do you have no practical use for an interactive map, but you really, really want one anyway? Well guess what, buttercup… we’re prepared to hook you up!
We’ve been doing store locators for clients for some time, but every once in a while we feel compelled to remind you of the many, many ways we can alter your Volusion store to suit your particular needs. In this latest case, BulletProofDiesel.com came to us with an existing Volusion store, but no good way to tell their online clients where they could have their products installed locally. That’s where our Volusion store locator implementation came in. Now, anyone browsing their online store will be easily able to pinpoint a local vendor, helping to seal the conversion and creating a brand new satisfied customer. It’s just that easy.
Contact us if you’re interested in a store locator for your Volusion site! We’ll be happy to help.
 We recently had the pleasure of launching Dealer Direct Parts‘ brand new Volusion store! This was a big one and we’ll tell you why…
In addition to designing the site and the logo, we created and developed a unique search refinement tool, specific to Dealer Direct’s business model. You see, they’re a network of dealer-authorized parts dealers and as you can well imagine (with the huge number of different makes and models) it could be pretty damn challenging to search their site in the hope of finding a specific part for your car. That’s where we came in.
Read about our solution after the jump…
Read the rest of this entry »
 So… this is awkward…
It seems that the folks at Volusion have once again introduced a tool for their platform that we’d already developed. Now don’t get us wrong. What’s good for Volusion is good for us, so we’re always thrilled at their continuing efforts to improve what is already the best shopping platform in the marketplace.
But…
We do feel compelled to point out one thing: we totally did it first. Sure, we already mentioned that, but our ego compels us to say it again. We introduced iVoloo (our iPhone-friendly Volusion store) two years ago and we updated it pretty dramatically just last month. All of this was completed independent of Volusion and as a direct result of needs expressed by our customers. Now, in the big scheme of things, does being first really matter?
Well… yes.
While we don’t yet know all the details about Volusion’s mCommerce, one thing is sure: we did it first. First is important because it means that we are capable of creating solutions before anyone else even has the opportunity to publicly recognize the need. First is important because it means that we’re nimble and responsive. First is important because every Volusion merchant who’s been using iVoloo, didn’t have to wait, nor will any new iVoloo customers have to wait for Volusion’s mCommerce beta to be complete.
This may sound like sour grapes (and that may be at least a little bit true), but, believe it or not, we have a great relationship with Volusion. We like Volusion. What’s important for us is that the Volusion community understand that we specialize in the development of custom solutions for all of their eCommerce (or mCommerce) needs. We look beyond Volusion’s limitations to see its possibilities… then we turn those possibilities into reality.
We’ll continue to develop tools and applications to expand on Volusion’s (already expansive) capabilities. Heck… we just introduced a more robust version of RapidCart, even though Volusion already has a soft-add-to-cart feature, just because we wanted to make a better one. We fully expect that someday Volusion will somehow match RapidCart, but by then, we’ll have moved on to another need, a new goal, because that’s what we do. We make the world a better place using every tool at our disposal, like Stephen Hawking or the A-Team.
 … okay. We know that Volusion just added soft-add-to-cart to their Winter ‘09 release, but give us just a moment to tell you why we’re sure you’re going to want RapidCart 2.0 instead.
Where to begin? … well, how about product options? RapidCart can handle multiple options with images. You like alternate product pics? You’ve got ‘em. You want to include all of your pricing info and product description copy? Check. But wait… there’s more! How would you like your soft-add-to-cart pop-in window to be styled to match the look and feel of your site? We’ve got you covered. Custom design is included in the RapidCart 2.0 implementation.
Of course, for many people, the Volusion soft-add-to-cart will be just fine, but for those who want to take their site to the next level, there’s RapidCart 2.0: custom development quality with an out-of-the-box price. Learn more and see RapidCart in action here.
 We loooove our iPhones. We’re aware of the stereotypes. We’ve heard the haters and the trolls. We don’t care. Our love is pure and magical and could never be diminished by the nattering nabobs of negativism (we so rarely get to quote Spiro Agnew).
The above-mentioned deep love was a big part of the reason that we introduced iVoloo – the first iPhone friendly Volusion store, back in July of 2008. Back in those days (it seems so long ago), iVoloo was a novelty. We developed it for a client who sells iPhone accessories, then (drunk with iPhone affection) decided to offer it to the Volusion community at large. In all honesty, back then, the need for iVoloo was debatable. There were absolutely excellent reasons to have a mobile-friendly store, but it wasn’t a critical need. Those times have changed.
Do you remember back when the internet was still in its infancy? It wasn’t that uncommon to search for a huge brand name, only to find that they had no web presence at all. You’d just shrug and grab the phone book (remember those?), look up the store and call them to get your questions answered. However, as time went by, an insufficient web presence became harder and harder to tolerate until finally it seemed like a personal affront to go searching for a store online and come up empty. We’ve now reached the point where even the humblest of mom & pop operations are virtually required to have a website, lest they risk the wrath of their constantly-connected consumers. That’s the future of mobile commerce. You can go ahead and ignore it… for now. You can ignore all of the research (here, here and here) that shows that consumers are quickly (very quickly) becoming comfortable with mCommerce. You can frustrate your mobile customers by failing to offer them what they are rapidly coming to expect from their online experience. You can put all of your eggs in your standard site and hope that your customers are tenacious enough to navigate your teeny-weeny little site in search of what they need.
… or, you could get ahead of the curve (and your competition) for less than a thousand bucks. Give us a call. It’ll be easier than you can imagine.
 Asking us to choose a favorite client would be like asking a parent to choose their favorite child. The suggestion alone is completely distasteful to us…
With that being said, Brand Labs is the most bestest client we’ve ever, ever had. They’re so totally awesome to work with and the entire process was an absolute pleasure. We couldn’t believe what an absolute delight they were and here’s what they had to say about us:
“Brand Labs is the best. Period. If you’re thinking of using anyone else, you’re a total dunderhead.”
Now, we don’t condone the use of antiquated Dutch insults, but they said it, not us. Anyhoo, be sure to check out the new homepage and the fancy, dynamic blog feed included therein. It’s the bestest.
 Every once in a while, something pops up on the Volusion forum that we would LOVE to comment on. It’s tough for us to see one of our Volusion-using brethren (and sistren?) struggling with a problem or a need that we know we could solve, yet be unable to tell them due to Volusion’s (completely fair) restriction on anything remotely like a sales pitch within their forum. While we understand the restriction, we are overcome with a desire to help, so we’ve decided that, from time to time, we’ll address a concern, problem or need that’s been posted in the Volusion forum here in this blog. Here’s a link to the post that inspired us to do so (you’ll need an account to access the thread.)
In this case the post didn’t explicitly express a need, but instead, included a link to this Internet Retailer article (which, itself, is quoting Compete’s Smartphone Intelligence survey for Q3 2009) that shows two things quite clearly. First, smartphone users are using their devices more and more, not just for “window shopping” but for actual mobile purchases (37% according to the survey). Second, they are less likely to make a mobile purchase on a site that hasn’t been optimized for the mobile experience.
We’ve been aware of this for some time and, as a matter of fact, last year we released iVoloo, which has the ability to take a select group of products from your store and offer them in an iPhone-friendly format for the shopper on the go. It’s a great tool and simply implementing it tells your customers that you understand their needs, but, the iVoloo wasn’t everything we’d hoped for. It was limited in the number of products it could display and it required our assistance to merchandise the mobile-specific format.
… but, we’ve been working on it and guess what? We are now poised to release iVoloo 2.0 and here’s the good news: not only can you put your whole damn store inside, but you’ll also be able to merchandise it easily (without any help from us) using the Volusion admin that you’re already familiar with! It’s as close to a plug-and-play solution as you could hope for.
The release of iVoloo 2.0 is mere weeks away and if you’re interested, you can contact us now and you’ll be one of the first to have this sweet new tool on your Volusion store as soon as it’s ready. Of course, you can also contact us for any other needs you may have, or you can post your question or need in the comments section of this post. Don’t worry, though… we keep our eyes on the Volusion forum and if something comes up there that we feel we can address, we’ll do so here.
Posted: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 in Volusion Apps and Plugins
 Not every bit of custom development we do for our Volusion customers is earth-shattering. Some are more like a whisper. Take the one on the left, for example.
We created a little plugin for TriathleteSports.com. It gathers product information from their Volusion merchandising to determine if any given product has the appropriate options to trigger the display of a “More Colors” graphic on the category page (as seen in the inset image). It may not change the world, but it will let Triathlete’s customers shop with a bit more ease, and isn’t that delightfully magical?
… okay. It’s fair to say that the holidays have gotten to us.
Posted: Friday, December 18, 2009 in Testimonials, Volusion Apps and Plugins
 Full disclosure here: Ryan Forrest, partner in Verde Lifestyles, also happens to be a member of our sales staff, but that shouldn’t matter at all because he’s a very honest young man and would never consider making any sort of untrue or misleading assertions. He’s also charming, virile and has a lovely singing voice.
With the disclaimer out of the way, we’d like to direct your attention to this post on the Verde Lifestyles blog about his experience with the latest (as yet unreleased) version of iVoloo, our iPhone-friendly Volusion store plugin. There’ll be more details later with the official release of 2.0, but we thought we’d build some buzz early on. As a matter of fact, we heard that Robert Pattinson and Ciara were totally excited about the upcoming release*.
*We have no way to confirm this because we completely made it up.
Posted: Friday, December 4, 2009 in Brand Labs, Volusion Apps and Plugins
 Sometimes around here we get so excited to tell you about our new clients and their sites that we fail to do any proper sales-pitch-like blog entries. Well, we intend to rectify that immediately (largely because our boss told us to do so in official email form about 2 months ago and we just now remembered).
Anyhoo… we do a lot of things here at Brand Labs. Obviously, you’ve seen our award-winning design work. Surely you’ve read about all of our SEO and marketing services, but did you know that we can help with all of your Volusion store’s custom development needs as well? Whether your need is small or large, we’re ready, willing and able to tackle it. Take this little Lightbox image viewer for example. It’s a simple enough thing and you’ve seen the mechanism used throughout the interwebs, but unfortunately, there’s no easy way to make it happen in Volusion. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. There’s one easy way: call Brand Labs. We can implement this very popular and versatile tool on your Volusion site so that it will dynamically utilize each of your product’s alternative images, allowing your customers to browse all of the available full-size product pictures without leaving the current page. Groundbreaking? Absolutely not. This tool is all over the place… but that’s the thing. Your customers are becoming more and more demanding. They’ve begun to expect certain things when shopping online. The limitations of a templated shopping platform can sometimes hamper your ability to compete. We can level the playing field for you, easily and affordably.
If you’d like to see this tool in action, just click the image above or click right here, then click on the “CLICK TO VIEW LARGER IMAGES” box below the main picture.
… sure, it’s a sales pitch, but you’ll thank us someday (probably right after you sign up and see how frigging awesome it looks).
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