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Step 1 Sign up for Volusion E-commerce

  1. Choose the Volusion Solution that meets your needs. All monthly solutions come with all the features, free upgrades, free technical support, and premium Rackspace hosting. If you don't already have a domain name, you will need to purchase one prior to making your purchase. If you have any questions about this process please feel free to contact our sales staff at 1-800-646-3517
  2. Sign up for an SSL certificate, this can be done at the time of purchase or at a later time when you are ready to go live.Once your order is placed, you should receive two emails. You first email will simply be an order confirmation. Once our developers had completed setting up your site on the servers the second email with login information and passwords usually within 24 hours. Learn more

Step 2 Set up your merchant account/gateway

Sign up for the merchant account of your choice. We recommend choosing a merchant account like Volusion Merchant Services, since it uses the  major gateway- SkipJack.  With Volusion Merchant Services you will be able to take full advantage of the all of the features available: authorize, capture, credit, and void directly from the Volusion Order Screen. In addition, if you choose Volusion Merchant Services you can also choose to accept e-checks. (Click here for more information or to sign up) After you've been approved for a gateway account (Volusion Merchant Services usually takes 2-4 business days) you will then choose that gateway from the drop down menu and enter in your login and password within the Settings —> Quicksetup section of the admin. To select which payment options you want to accept you will then go to the Settings —> Payment section of the admin.Learn more

Step 3 Create Categories

The first part of setting up your store is adding Categories to place your products in. To add a new category: click on Inventory -> Categories then click the blue ADD button on the top menu bar. A page will load with the form used to add a new category. There are only three fields required to add a new category. Each one is labeled with bold text to the left of the field. Parent ID designates where the category actually resides. If you are trying to create a main category that is displayed on the Navigation Menu then you would select [0] MAIN CATEGORY from the drop down menu. If you were trying to create a sub-category, then you would select the category you wanted it to be under from the drop down. Category Name determines what is actually displayed in the link for the category. Category Visible determines which navigation menu the category is actually displayed in.Learn more.

Step 4 Load Products

After you have created the categories for your store you can begin adding products. To add a product: click on Inventory —> Products in the admin area. From the products page then click on the blue ADD button in the top menu bar. The product page has several fields that allow you to customize the information used for items in your store but only three are actually required. Again these required fields are labeled with bold text. The product code field is used to for the identification code for the product. This can be a number designated by a manufacturer or vendor or something that you create on your own. The Product Price is used for the actual price displayed on the product page and how much the customer is charged. The Product Name field allows you to specify the name the product is listed under. Even though it is not required it is normally a good idea to fill out Product Category(s) so the products will be listed when the customer selects a category. In this field you would enter the id number for the category you want to have the product listed under. The id numbers for each category can be found in the Inventory —> Categories section. Learn more

Step 5 Importing

If you have hundreds of products, then adding them each manually through the admin area can be quite time consuming. An easier way to add several products is through Volusion"s import feature. To import products click on the link Inventory —> Import-Export in the admin area. From there you will be given the option to do either a data import or a data export. We highly recommend doing a data export before importing to get the correct format for the store database. Also when doing the export we recommend not including any of the fields listed under virtual columns since they can cause issues with the import. Once you have a file with all of your product information in CSV (comma separated value) format you can click on the link for Data Import. From the import screen you would select Products from the table drop down and specify the file you want to use in the File Name field. For Overwriting Existing Data you should set it to replace any existing data with new data unless you want to completely remove all of the products you currently have in your store. Once you have entered all of the required information you can click on the Upload my files button to transfer the data into your store. If you are using a demo and would like to use the import feature, then please ask us to open the import feature. Learn more

Step 6 Customizing Your Store

Volusion's software is completely customizable and gives you full HTML and ftp access. You can choose to use one of our free templates, create your own design, have Volusion design a custom site for you or integrate Volusion software into an existing website. In addition you have access within the admin section to change colors site wide on a real time basis. Learn more.

Step 7 Shipping, Tax & Email Accounts

Shipping

Volusion software comes loaded with real time shipping rates and advanced options like drop shipping automation. You will want to select the carrier(s) of your choice within in the Settings —> Shipping section of the admin area. Learn more

Tax

Click on Settings —> Tax in the admin area. Generally in the United States you only charge tax on an order if your warehouse is in the same state as the customer's ShipTo address, but you will need to check with your local taxing authority to be sure. The default setting assumes you wish to collect tax for California residents only, at 8.35%. We strongly suggest that you edit / verify all tax rates in the system tax tables to reflect those states and the proper tax rates in which you are responsible for tax collection.  You may modify/add states as you wish. Learn more

Setting Up Email Accounts

  1. Go to http://my.volusion.com and log into your account
  2. Click EMAIL on the left side of the page
  3. Click MAILBOXES to add email accounts or ALIASES to add alias accounts.
  4. For an email account, add the email name, password and full name. For an alias account, add the email name and then the full email address(es) to which the emails should be forwarded.
  5. Click ADD MAILBOX or ADD ALIAS, depending on which you are creating.
To access the email accounts, use http://mail.yourdomain.com and log in with the email address and password you've created.
Click here to learn more.

Step 8 SEO, PPC & Built-in Marketing Tools

SEO (Search engine optimization)

SEO is a relatively new field of internet specialization and an especially effective tool for making a site more easily found by search engines. You'll be hearing a lot about this one if you haven't already. It is really important in making your online business successful. For this reason, we have built in some of the absolute best SEO features of any software on the market. The software automatically creates dynamic SEO friendly pages, dynamic site maps, has completely customizable Meta Tag fields and plenty of spots for your keywords. (Please note that if you are using a demo, the SEO tools are disabled.) Learn more

Volusion SEO SERVICES

Volusion SEO Specialists understand how to maximize your store's search engine power and do so legitimately, using cutting-edge SEO techniques that have proven to be effective. Since no one knows our software better than we do, we are uniquely capable of optimizing your e-commerce store. Let Volusion do the work for you! Learn more

PPC (Pay per click advertising)

As part of a balanced marketing plan, you will need to run online advertising to help others find your site. Everyday millions of people use search engines to find new products and services and everyday sales are made due to these searches. We recommend using the 2 largest online advertising services to run your advertising campaigns: http://www.google.com/ads/ and http://www.overture.com/

Volusion PPC SERVICES

Let FastTraffic promote your business in the exact spot your future customers are looking. FastTraffic is a full service pay per click advertising program. Using years of experience, research and analysis in search engine marketing, the FastTraffic team makes certain that the ads created are doing what they should be doing — leading traffic to your website. We’ll get the traffic to your website, you finalize the sale! It’s that easy. Let Volusion do the work for you! Learn more

Built in Marketing Tools

Volusion has a lot of great built in marketing tools such as: affiliate programs, email marketing, ability to send out coupons, use of gift certificates, ability to set customer discount levels, email a friend, etc. Learn more

Step 9 Place & Process Orders

Placing Orders

There are several options available for placing orders other than just from the storefront. You will be able to place phone orders from one screen or set up a point of sale system that works with a credit card swipe/ wand and printer within a physical store location. Learn more

Processing Orders

Each time an order is placed, you and the customer will receive a notification via e-mail at the address you specified. Next, you will click Orders —> Orders of the admin area. From here you will follow a 5-step process:

  1. Lock Order
  2. Collect Payments
  3. Print Invoice / Packing Slips
  4. Ship Items / Add Tracking Numbers
  5. Complete Order / Send Emails
Learn more

Step 10 Analytics & Reporting

The Volusion E-commerce Software has several features available for tracking the statistics of your site including: Top Customers, Top Affiliates, Total Sales, Total Tax, Most Visited Categories, Most Visited Products, Top Selling Products, etc. You will also have access to your website statistics (page views, hits, referrers, etc.), ROI tracking for PPC ad campaigns and the ability to add 3rd party statistics. In addition you are always able to export any financial data, down to even the most minute order details. Learn more