In the late 1990s, website designer Kevin Sproles noticed a trend in his clients’ requests. They wanted shopping cart software they could use to easily sell online. In response, Sproles founded Volusion, an all-in-one shopping cart option for small to large businesses. Since its founding in 1999, Volusion has grown to employ more than 250 people and now hosts over 40 thousand online stores, including Element Outfitters and Evutec.
Volusion offers a 14 Day Free Trial (no credit card required) so you can test out the platform with zero risk. If and when you decide to use Volusion to host your online store, you can choose from four pricing tiers. All are billed on a monthly basis, without any setup or cancellation fees (though if you cancel you must remember to cancel all your third party services individually to avoid additional fees). Although you don’t have to sign any contracts to use Volusion, if you do decide to make a year-long commitment to the platform, you can benefit from a 10% discount.
Volusion offers a Free 14 Day Trial to all prospective customers. While you will have to provide Volusion with some contact info, you get to keep your credit card number all to yourself.
Upon creating your account, you will immediately be directed to your admin. Here’s what the dashboard looks like.
While Volusion’s theme selection used to be lacking, they have recently unveiled a brand new selection of fully mobile responsive themes, which are a big improvement.
Volusion offers 13 free themes, and as I’ve said, all of them are now mobile responsive. With 30% of all online sales coming from mobile devices, it’s imperative that your site looks great on smartphones and tablets.
Volusion comes with all the features you’d expect from a popular shopping cart. Here’s a quick breakdown of a few of those features.
For the Customer
One page checkout: Help your customers purchase quickly for a higher conversion rate.
Allow social media sharing: Let your customers share their excitement and promote your brand.
Gift cards, daily deals, and coupon codes: Create all of these features in your admin.
Abandoned cart reports and emails: Remind your customers to complete their transactions.
Allow reviews and ratings: Inspire confidence in your products and your brand.
Give customers a good look at your products: Post multiple product images and enable zoom and color swatch features so your customers know exactly what they’re purchasing.
While Volusion is an okay option, I can’t call it the best. Volusion’s less-than-current software, spotty customer service, and additional fees make me question whether it would be a good long term investment, so I cannot wholeheartedly recommend it over other fully hosted shopping cart options.
However, that isn’t to say that this cart is the wrong choice for every merchant. Plenty of merchants have found success with Volusion. You might as well. Sign up for Volusion’s free trial by clicking the link below, and try it out for yourself.
