Volusion Review: The Right Solution for Your Business?

Volusion is a data lover's dream, but it's far from ideal for creatives

In the world of ecommerce, Volusion is a well-respected old timer. First launched in 1999, it currently powers over 30,000 online stores, racking up 185 million orders worth a combined $26 billion along the way. With a brand new operating system, it’s now easier than ever to use – but is Volusion the right solution for your business?

Volusion Overview

Volusion has recently introduced a new operating system, V2, which has improved the UX (user experience). In other words, it’s now easier than before to create an online store with Volusion.

How has it done so? For starters, the platform has decluttered the editing interface, helping you build your store more quickly. It also now has a much cleaner inventory system, which will help you manage your stock more easily.

Why the spring clean? Ecommerce platforms are now easier than ever to use, and Volusion hasn’t done so well in this category in the past. In order to keep pace with Shopify and other leaders of the pack, Volusion ironed out a few kinks, introducing more visual cues and simpler language.

Who is Volusion for? Specializing in brilliant data reports and analytics tools, it’s ideal for the number crunchers among us. But let’s take a look at what else you get with Volusion.

Some of our favorite features include:

✔ Intuitive editor interface

✔ Mobile app

✔ Product videos

✔ Access to 1,000+ apps through Zapier

✔ Supports PayPal, Stripe, and more

✔ Zero transaction fees on all plan

✔ Mobile responsive themes

✔ Abandoned cart recovery

Volusion Pricing

Volusion has three core price plans, offering more features to help your online store grow the more you pay. As with most website building platforms, the monthly subscriptions may seem like a large sum, but it’s sofa money compared to the cost of a web design agency.

Let’s take a look at Volusion’s price plans below…

Mobile Ready Themes

With more people shopping on their cell phones than ever before, it’s clear mobile commerce is taking over. This means your store needs to look good on screens of every size.

If your store is hard to navigate because it’s not mobile ready, you risk losing customers. What’s more, online store themes that aren’t mobile ready can negatively impact your SEO (a subject which we’ll dive into later).

In short, Google penalizes websites that don’t have mobile responsive pages. When it comes to mobile ready themes, if you drop the ball, your website’s rankings will follow suit.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving your website’s ranking on search engines like Google. The more people who can find your website, the more clicks – and cash – your online store will receive.

Volusion recognizes the importance of SEO. It offers a number of features to help improve your store’s rankings, including:

• Keyword research assistance
• Google Analytics integration
• Customizable meta titles and descriptions
• SEO friendly FAQ pages
• Personalizable URLs

You can even outsource the SEO stuff to a third party contractor. While this will incur more costs down the line, letting an expert take the SEO stress away will allow you to focus on building your ecommerce empire.

However, Volusion drops points for its lack of blogging. Blogs and Google are a match made in heaven, so if your business builds blogs, you should probably look elsewhere for your ecommerce platform. But for all other things SEO, Volusion ranks highly in our books.

Customer Support

Given the unpredictable nature of technology, it’s likely that everyone will need a helping hand from time to time. With Volusion, you benefit from 24/7 phone support on all plans except the Personal tier. Don’t like using phones? No problem – online help is at hand on all plans.

As you can see, the more you pay, the more help you receive. And don’t forget, you save 10% if you sign up for a whole year, rather than month by month subscriptions.

Ease of Use

Volusion can help users build an online store with ease, but are we comfortable recommending it for beginners?

Volusion comes with feature-heavy templates that cover a huge range of industries. While this may restrict your creative thought, it makes the whole design process much easier. Also, with the introduction of V2, Volusion is now a much easier platform to navigate than before.

The back-end (where your stock is kept) is simple to use, so you can manage the backbone of your store quickly and without a fuss. The actual front-end editor interface doesn’t match Shopify for ease of use, but Volusion still does well in this department overall.

The fact you can outsource SEO is a major plus. It’ll cost you a fair few dollars, but for that you get expert help, and far fewer headaches.

Expert Verdict

Volusion is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms around. But why should your business fuse with Volusion? It comes down to a few things, which we’ll recap below…

Firstly, Volusion is easy to use. The intuitive design tools help owners of small, medium, and large businesses to build an online store quickly, even without any coding experience.

Secondly, with heaps of helpful analytics features, Volusion gives you a detailed insight into the behavior of your customers. This lets you get ahead of the game in the market, as well as ahead of your competitors.

Lastly, Volusion is a much cheaper option than hiring a web designer. With monthly subscriptions starting from just $29.99 /mo, there’s no comparison when it comes to the lengthy invoice from a web design agency.

Add to the mix some comprehensive customer support, access to 1,000+ apps to bolster your site’s performance, and powerful sales tools, and you can see how Volusion can help take your ecommerce ambitions to the next level.