When entering the weight of a product in Volusion, you need to specify the weight using whole numbers for pounds and the decimal equivalent for any ounces.
For example: if a product weighs one pound and one ounce, you can not enter it as 1lb. 1oz., you need to convert the ounces to decimal values where ONE OUNCE = .0625 (lbs), so in the ProductWeight field you [READ MORE...]
This article is intended for Volusion ecommerce software users and contains information about preparing product image files for bulk upload when importing large amounts of products using product data prepared offline or exported from another source.
The information is also helpful if you are migrating from another ecommerce / shopping cart platform and want to save time converting your existing store's product photos for use in Volusion.
For Volusion stores with only small number of products, using the Admin console to upload your product images is very easy. You simply create a product record, click the Upload New Photos link, and follow the prompts. Volusion will automatically size and store your product image file, and create the various sizes it needs to display on category, product and check-out pages.
There are just two words that sum up the internal search function of Volusion eCommerce shopping cart software -- but being a professional, I won't use those two words, and will instead just say, "not good".
When a user searches your Volusion store, the search only returns results where the search term appears in the Product Code, Product Name or if the words were (manually) entered in the Additional Product Keywords field of a product record. By default, none of the text in product descriptions, product options, category pages, help files, policy pages, the "knowledge base", (or image alt tags, meta data, etc, etc), or any other text in your store is searched.
To enable Volusion's "extensive search", (which does at least search the description fields of your product pages), you need to add the following hidden input field into your search form.
<input type="hidden" name="Extensive_Search" value="Y">
Still the result pages are poorly formatted and since there are no suggestions for mis-spelled words, semantic or contextual search functionality, and no "best match" -- this leaves the user to fumble through the results, or worse; may cause potential customers to leave your site and go to Google or another search engine to locate the product they want to buy.
But, there is a solution...
So, you're whipping around the admin side of your Volusion store, you delete or add some categories, move some products from one category to another and then go to the user side of the store and the changes don't appear...
I found this problem when a category I deleted was still appearing in the left navigation menu, (and now gave the error message: Category ID# Does not Exist when I clicked it).
Why?... It seems Volusion does not alway publish all your changes immediately -- unless you set the Config Variable telling it to. Worse, sometimes Volusion does not honor this setting, (or forgets it was set), and you need to manually reset the variable.
There's a new sheriff in town, and no it's not 'big brother', it's just the opposite. Everyday people now have the ability to propel your business into the spotlight, or drag it down by it's heels.
How have these people become so empowered?
Consumer review web sites now give them a soapbox to stand on right in the middle of the virtual village square.
One of the new players in the Web 2.0 "review this business" business is Yelp and there are others including iKarma, CitySquares, OpenList and JudysBook, just to name a few.
While some people are saying, "Power to the people!", others, including business owners are crying foul. An article in The Register, claims that Yelp not only pays reviewers -- a fact Yelp owners acknowledge, saying, [they do pay reviewers], but "Only for about two month in new areas".
Yelp, was co-founded by Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons who both formerly worked as engineers at PayPal. (I can't help saying it -- anyone who worked at PayPal knows what it's like to hear customers complain! -- but that's a topic for another review)... Yelp CEO Stoppelman denies that advertisers can pay and have bad reviews removed or pushed down to the bottom of the page where they are less obvious, (and less likely to turn up in search engine listings). Stoppelman seemed to back-track a bit and say that he couldn't argue that some "rogue salesperson" was pitching that scenrio to potential advertisers.
The problem with these review sites is [READ MORE...]