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Archive for the ‘Volusion’ Category
Posted: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 in Clients, Industry, Internet, News, Volusion, eCommerce
 Last week, our founders (and senior corporate officers) Kevin Harman and Dane Downer, attended the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago. In addition to representin’ for Brand Labs, they had the opportunity to meet with our friends at Volusion, including founder and president, Kevin Sproles (seen here chatting with Kevin and Dane).
Attendance for the conference was up significantly over last year and the prevailing tone was overwhelmingly optimistic, as eCommerce continues to assert its critical position in the world of consumer retail operations as a whole. The obvious buzzword (or buzzphrase, if you will) was mobile commerce, and as the first developers of a mobile Volusion platform, we weren’t surprised one little bit. Hit the jump to see a few pics of Brand Labs with all the party people…
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Posted: Tuesday, June 8, 2010 in Brand Labs, Tips and Tricks
 From time to time, our big-brained programmers and developers take some time out of their busy schedules to impart a bit of their encyclopedic knowledge to the Volusion community at large. Today is just such an occasion.
If you follow this link to our knowledgebase, you’ll find an excellent tutorial on just how to… ummmm… er… well… how about if I just give you a little quote that explains the whole thing. From the article:
“Sometimes you need to make changes to many of your Volusion store’s products. Volusion’s Bulk Updates capability is great, but when you have a large number of products or lots of changes to make, even this may be cumbersome.
The solution is to export the products to your computer, make your changes in a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel, and then import your products back into Volusion. Volusion covers importing and exporting quite well, so the purpose of this article is to expand on what is possible with import/export in Volusion.”
We couldn’t have said it any better. Hit the link to read the whole article…
Posted: Saturday, May 22, 2010 in Industry, Volusion
 Volusion is the belle of the eCommerce ball…
That sounded wrong.
Regardless, let’s just say that Volusion is up for a bunch of trophies in the upcoming Stevie Awards (the American Business Awards) on June 21. We wish them the very best of luck!
(via Volusion)
 Volusion just launched their new website and we’re pretty sure they’re hitting on us.
If you click around the site, you’ll get to see a decent amount of Brand Labs designs mixed in as examples of the sort of fantastic sites that can be created for the platform… including the most prominent example on the landing page for the Showcase Gallery itself: National Geographic UK. That’s one of ours!
Also, though they’re a bit harder to make out in the background, they’ve also included the Red Hat Society Store and EcoMowers.com, two of our oldest clients.
Click through to see some more of our work featured on Volusion’s new site…
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 A couple of days ago, Volusion announced the upcoming introduction of their new Partners Program. In addition to being thrilled about the program itself, we were also flattered that they chose us to represent the type of partnership that they hope to build with each of the program’s members. You can read the announcement here. (Read all the way to the end to read our contribution.)
Of course, we’ve always made our feelings about Volusion pretty clear. We’ve counted and there are over 23 bazillion uses of the word Volusion scattered throughout our site and at least one member of our staff has the Volusion logo tattooed on a very private region of their body, so we’re obviously down with the V, but it’s gratifying to know that our devotion is reciprocated. How reciprocated? Well, here’s what Volusion has to say about us:
“Over the past ten years, we’ve had the privilege to develop several relationships in becoming a leading ecommerce provider. One that stands out above the rest is our partnership with Brand Labs, an indispensable asset to our community. When we launched the Volusion Partner Network, we gladly welcomed Brand Labs as an Agency Partner. We are eager to further extend our collaboration with Brand Labs into the future by focusing on what is best in helping our merchants succeed.”
James Booker – Business Development Manager – Volusion
… to be fair, we added the bold to the “indispensable asset” part, but that was our favorite bit.
We look forward to the continuation of our long and happy partnership. Thanks Volusion!
Posted: Monday, March 29, 2010 in Search Engine Optimization, Volusion
 Search Engine Optimization (as we’ve mentioned multiple times in this blog) is a mysterious thing. Ask 20 people how to optimize a web page and you’ll get 20 different answers, but the one thing that you’re likely to hear over and over again is “quality content,” which is why quality content is an important element of every SEO campaign we manage. Of course, saying that you need quality content is easier than creating quality content, so we’ve put together a couple of tips that may help you out. Check them out after the jump…
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 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…
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 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.
Posted: Thursday, March 4, 2010 in Tips and Tricks
 In our never-ending quest to share our Volusion-related knowledge with the world, we offer this latest entry into our growing knowledge base: Migration from FTP Published Blogger Blog to a Hosted Blogger Blog on Volusion.
Despite its blatant overuse of the word “blog” (and variations thereof), we’re entirely sure that many of you will find this little tutorial quite useful. Especially for those of you who like to blog with the blogger and blog bloggingly, blog, blog and bloggle with the bloggest blog in bloggly bloggington. Blog? Blog blog.
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