Internet Entrepreneurs Blog

You have no doubt been waiting with bated breath for the conclusion to my e-commerce article to find out which solution I chose for my first real e-commerce project. In the end Volusion seemed to meet most of our needs for a reasonable price. But despite having the opportunity to try the software free of charge for 2 weeks, there were still surprises and disappointments along the way. Nothing is perfect, right?

First off, the ability to customize Volusion stores is much more limited than I had hoped it would be. Much of the shopping cart, product pages, and category pages are locked up in ASP files that can’t be touched and in many ways you’re just able to frame the Volusion layout with your own template. Great for people without the time or skills to edit HTML, frustrating for those who do. Support for CSS is spotty at best, though with better penetration it could be used to really allow full customization. To make most of the design changes you need to edit/replace the stock background, button, and layout images, a time consuming and frustrating process.

I initially signed up for the cheapest plan Volusion offers thinking it would be more than enough to get started (100 products, 1Gb of data per month, 50 Mb storage) but quickly found that Volusion’s definition of a product is different than most. After adding just 25 items (t-shirts, four sizes of each SKU) I had hit the 100 product limit. It turns out “product” means SKU/option combination when using option-level inventory control, forcing us to upgrade to a pricier plan just to get our initial inventory loaded (less than 60 SKUs). Frustrating, and seemingly a little deceptive.

Technical support has been good with prompt and courteous responses to most of my inquiries. In one case I was told something was not possible just as I figured out how to do it on my own. No worries though, this is what happens when you’re a technical genius like I am

The Volusion servers seem to be a bit slow at times and the file caching they use is pretty aggressive (good for bandwidth I guess, not so good for making quick changes).

Although my comments may seem overwhelmingly negative, I’m really quite happy with the choice thus far. The payment integration was simple and the backend admin area is powerful (especially compared to my osCommerce foray). The SEO tools seem solid, though our site isn’t listed in the search engines yet so it’s tough to tell. The data system seems to be very flexible and exporting info to Froogle and Endicia (for shipping) has been a snap. I’ve even been able to build custom ASP pages with database hooks (though not officially supported) that work like a charm. The support forums are great and other Volusion store owners are more than willing to offer advice and support.
Volusion really seems to be the best hosted e-commerce solution around, despite the limited customization options currently available. I’m looking forward to more e-commerce solutions that take things to the next level of customization and powerful back end support (keep an eye on these guys).

I’ve come to realize a major shortcoming of Google AdWords (and similar search marketing options) is the inability to advertise innovative products and services. What do I mean?

Well suppose you just invented a electric widget. No one knows about the electric widget yet or the benefits of owning such a device and so they certainly aren’t searching for “electric widgets” on google or anywhere else. You could try to buy search terms related to your competition and build ads saying something like “Still using a manual widget, try the electric version!”

But what about if there isn’t even another thing like the widget out there? You could try to buy keywords that your target market are searching for (suppose many people in the market for electric widgets also enjoy playing soccer). But if you buy “soccer” as your keyword your ad will quickly disappear due to its irrelevance to searchers’ intended information.

Let me make this more concrete. I’m working with a partner on launching a site called Unity3 that sells “inspired fashion” clothing (basically, clothes for Christian teens and twenty-somethings). There is some search traffic for “Christian clothes” and the like but for most Christian teens there is very little awareness of the Christian clothing category at all. Our hope is that the market will continue to get larger (due in part to our marketing) but this isn’t possible through advertising on obvious terms.

One of our strategies has been to advertise alongside other keywords these kids ARE searching for like Christian music (bands like Switchfoot, Anberlin, etc.) The search traffic here is HUGE compared to the Christian clothing traffic and the demographic is right. However, since our ads aren’t as tightly targeted as, say, a CD retailer, our ads are quickly deactivated for search.

What does this mean? It means online retailers in newly or unestablished markets can’t rely on search marketing alone - mainly because no one knows what to search for yet! New markets require old school marketing - print, television, etc. - which can be expensive. So while first mover advantage is key, it is also costly.