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Archive for the ‘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 »
 … 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.
 Carnal DaMMAge, one of the leading online retailers of MMA-related goods, took a big step forward today with the launch of their iPhone-friendly website.
Now, Carnal DaMMAge’s customers will be able to shop (and buy) on a mobile-optimized Volusion site, eliminating one more barrier between browsing and conversion.
You, too, can have an iPhone-friendly Volusion store for less than a thousand dollars! (Okay… it’s $995, so not a lot less than a thousand… but still, it’s less.)
If you’d like to capture some of the ever-expanding mCommerce market (quickly and affordably) check out iVoloo. On the other hand, if you’d like to beat the tar out of someone, but you’d like to be sure you’re properly outfitted first, check out Carnal DaMMAge.
 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.
Posted: Wednesday, December 9, 2009 in Apps and Plugins, Brand Labs
 What’s wrong with the picture at the left? It looks like a detail of a product page from a Volusion site… but what’s this? It has video in the image area! Not only that, but it’s not even the main image… it’s included as one of the “additional photos”! Clearly this is some sort of Photoshop trickery, because Volusion doesn’t do that.
… until now, that is. All thanks to the clever folks we keep locked away in a dark, little room in our custom development department.
See this sweet new product detail video in action. If you’d like to know how to add some punch to your Volusion store, contact us. We’ll be happy to work our magic on your behalf.
Posted: Friday, June 5, 2009 in Apps and Plugins, Brand Labs
 In our effort to end the week with a bang, we’d like to introduce yet another in our growing line of FREE applications for Volusion: The Switcheroo. This fun new plugin allows your customers to swap out the main image on the product detail pages in your Volusion store simply by mousing over the additional image thumbnails. It’s a simple interface that requires no clicking and, more importantly… it’s FREE. Granted, since today is national donut day and there are two big chains giving away crullers to celebrate, this may not be the best free thing you get today, but this one won’t go straight to your thighs.
Posted: Thursday, May 14, 2009 in Apps and Plugins, Brand Labs
 We’ve just released version 1.0.5 of RapidCart for Volusion. The update primarily consists of some very minor bug fixes, but what the heck… it offered us the opportunity to once again talk about one of our FREE Volusion apps and if there’s anything we like to talk about, it’s FREE Volusion apps. RapidCart is among the very best because it allows your customers to see all of the images for any product from any page on your site AND they can add it right to their cart! Fewer clicks = faster conversions… and did we mention that it’s totally free?
Posted: Friday, May 8, 2009 in Apps and Plugins, Brand Labs
 Today we’ve posted an updated version of our Volusion iGoogle Gadget. It contains a few minor bugfixes and is sporting a snazzy new look that’s a bit more in line with our branding. We’ve also updated our Volusion Mac Widget. It’s been submitted to Mac for re-inclusion in their Widget library, but in the meantime, it’s available on our (soon-to-be-updated) Mac Widget Page. These handy little tools are our gift to the Volusion community. Enjoy!
UPDATE: Our updated Mac Volusion Widget has been re-approved and may now be found (once again) in the Apple Download Center.
Posted: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 in Apps and Plugins, Brand Labs
 Most people who have been working on any eCommerce platform (Volusion included) for any length of time have grown used to the idea that there are limitations to every shopping cart; limitations that you just have to live with. We hate that kind of thinking. We prefer to believe that anything is possible and we’re rarely proven wrong.
If you’ve looked around our site at all, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen our library of Volusion software applications and plugins, but what you may not have understood completely is that many of those applications were developed as a direct result of customer requests. You can read one of our development tales after the jump…
StuffedAnimals.com (a longtime customer) is a multi-million dollar business and when you get that big, you have the time and resources to examine your business on every level, which is just what they had been doing when they discovered that they had a high number of abandoned carts each month. Every one of those full, but dormant carts represented a missed opportunity for conversion. It’s sad enough to think of all of those stuffed bunnies and kittens abandoned in the cold, infinite dark of cyberspace, but the lost revenue was too much to bear (*insert your own teddy bear pun here).
To combat the problem, StuffedAnimals.com began to send follow-up emails to the customers who had abandoned their carts. The process was time consuming, as it involved logging into the Volusion admin screen, isolating the abandoned carts, then determining which of those were connected with a registered customer, then manually sending that customer an email suggesting that they complete the purchase (enticing them with a discounted purchase price). The results were significant, but so was the effort to achieve them. That’s where we came in.
After being made aware of the problem and the potential revenue available, we immediately set about developing an automated solution. Approximately 20 gallons of coffee and hundreds of lines of code later, The Voloomerang was born. An elegant solution, The Voloomerang offers eMerchants the opportunity to craft a message they believe will entice their wandering customers to return and complete their purchase. This message is then sent automatically (using data gathered directly from the Volusion admin) to the potential customer and the results can often be dramatic. StuffedAnimals.com reported to us that they had seen returns as high as 35%!
So what does this mean to you? Well, for one thing, you can sign up for The Voloomerang right now and start reaping the benefits immediately, but that’s not really the point of this post. The point of this post is: if you have a very specific need that falls outside of Volusion’s capabilities, if you have a problem that needs solving, call Brand Labs. We’re like The A-Team of Volusion-related needs… so we’re like The V-Team and we’re ready to kick your problem’s ass.
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