|
|
Posts Tagged ‘Plugins’
 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.
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, 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).
Posted: Thursday, November 19, 2009 in Testimonials, Volusion Apps and Plugins
 Hey… we didn’t say it. We’re just quoting here. (Okay, we have said it, but this time we’re quoting.)
We got a lovely email today from Assaf at YCA Solar Light Store. We could selectively quote, but what the heck… let’s just show you the whole darn thing:
“The autoresponder by Brand Labs is the single best tool I’ve come across in my ecommerce business to date.
In terms of bang for your buck, you will not believe how much you get out of this tool. Our top two revenue generators are Google Adwords and the AutoResponder, and it’s close.
Clearly, sending an email 3 weeks after an item is marked shipped is the ideal time, because the purchase is fresh in their minds and with the right incentive, clients are willing to take the time to write a review. When enough reviews accumulate, conversions definitely go up.
It’s beautiful.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves (… and we totally didn’t. We swear.) Thanks, Assaf!
If you’d like to check out the Auto Responder, you may do so here. Or, just contact us and we’ll be happy to sell you the “single best tool” in the whole history of eCommerce… ever. (We did make that last part up, but it’s probably true.)
Posted: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 in Brand Labs, Custom Development
 The headline says it all. The single, most requested feature for Volusion is now available thanks to the tireless efforts of Brand Labs’ in-house development team!
The truth is that we’ve had a soft add to cart feature for some time, but we wanted to polish it up and expand the feature set a bit before springing it on the general public. Now that we have a complete and very robust tool, we thought we’d tell you a bit about it.
First of all, it’s soft add to cart. We know we already said that, but people LOVE soft add to cart, so we can’t say it enough. You. Can. Now. Have. Soft. Add. To. Cart. On. Your. Volusion. Store.
Second, when your customer exercises the soft add to cart option, they won’t just be met with a “checkout or continue shopping” option. They’ll also get to see the contents of their cart… with pictures! Not only that, but the pop-in window and its buttons can be custom designed to match the look of your store. No flavorless templates here. We’re a classy organization.
Finally, just as an extra bonus, when your customer hovers over the shopping cart in your header, the pop in will appear, allowing them to review the cart’s contents without having to leave the page they’re currently on. No more backtracking. No more conversions lost to a frustrating navigation procedure.
Whether you’re a current Brand Labs customer or not, if you’re a Volusion merchant, we can hook you up. Don’t wait for the tool that the whole eCommerce community is clamoring for. Call us today!
UPDATE: We failed to mention that you can see this tool in all of its fully operational eCommerce glory at Verde Lifestyles.
 Among our many recent site launches is CartridgeZoom.com. Providing ink and toner cartridges for nearly every type of printer you can imagine, they presented us with a merchandising challenge that grew quickly into a custom development challenge.
Cartridge Zoom was looking for a way for their customers to be able to search for their printer’s replacement cartridge in a variety of ways. That meant that for each manufacturer, we needed to provide a way to search by series and by part number. When you take into account the sheer number of different printers on the market today, that challenge seems insurmountable. Of course, any site search tool could get the job done (in an inelegant way) but the results provided by site search tools can be confusing where part numbers are concerned. That’s where our Custom Development team came into the picture.
We created a pair of custom search drop downs that fit into the category header for each brand. This had the benefit of allowing the customer to easily isolate parts related to their printer with a greater likelihood of success on their first try, eliminating the frustration customers often feel when trying to find a very specific item. This dramatically decreases the time required for conversion, making the shopping experience a pleasure and encouraging repeat business.
We don’t just make Custom Development solutions; we make business solutions.
… and websites. We make websites, too.
Posted: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 in Brand Labs, Volusion Apps and Plugins
 The real news here is not the new version (which is basically a collection of minor bugfixes) but that RapidCart remains completely FREE to the entire Volusion Community!
If you’d like your customers to be able to see a product’s entire collection of photos AND be able to add that product to their cart from anywhere on your site, then RapidCart is for you.
… we mentioned the “TOTALLY FREE” thing, right? You can get RapidCart here.
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: 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.
|
|
