Fifth Annual Small Business Summit 2010 - 16 March

December 21, 2007

Selling Online Takes A Good E-Commerce Technology Back End

There's a few secrets to selling online and many of them can only be implemented with good technology.

For example, do you think Amazon.com would be the powerhouse of online commerce it is today, without a very robust engine to help you decide what to buy from its vast online store - based on your past purchase decisions and the past purchase decisions of others?

Of course there's much more to Amazon.com's success, such as millions of dollars in marketing/pr/advertising and customer service.

Your small business might not have the deep pockets of Amazon.com, but if you are serious about building your online business you must invest something to ensure you can not only sell online but provide a great customer experience.

This leads me to Volusion. I last had a look at Volusion in 2004 in this interview going over their e-commerce product. 3 years later I've taken their product for a spin and can say that it still is indeed feature rich, relatively easy to use and economical.

Although its back end administrative interface is still a bit clunky and 'web 1.0" looking, don't let this book's cover fool you.

Volusion's administrative back end will take a few minutes to get used to. It's not complicated but there are so many features and tools it might take you a while to navigate and understand what each of the options enables you to do.

Thankfully Volusion has a menu that makes accessing the features pretty easy. It will remind you a bit of Microsoft's new ribbon bar at the top of Microsoft Office.

Let's have a look at some of the features, you and your customers will like:

• One page check out is a nice touch and saves your customers time when they're ready to make their purchase.
• No merchant fees. Many e-commerce sites charge you a transaction fee - the more you sell the more you pay. Volusion doesn't make money from your sale volume.
• Rackspace is the hosting provider for Volusion and from what I've known of their service - it's one of the best in the business.

Other tools, integrated right into Volusion that I think are impressive is its email newsletter service (it's NOT as slick nor feature rich as Constant Contact though). Email marketing is critical to boosting sales from current customers and keeping in touch with prospective customers.

I'm not entirely sure how good Volusion's CRM module is, but by the fact that it has this module to enable some automation is a plus.

Email is probably one of the biggest ways you keep in touch and correspond with customers and Volusion enables you to integrate your email as well.

I could go on and on, but if you're looking for a company that's stable, provides 24/7 support, and provides economical servcie, definitely give Volusion a try. Volusion offers a 14 day trial - 2 weeks is long enough to find out if its a solution for you.

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