The Revolution of Volusion eCommerce Software: A Hands On Review

I recently migrated a small business client to Volusion for their eCommerce solution. Going into it, it seemed like it would be the right decision based on their budget and needs. However, it’s hard to know for sure until you actually put the eCommerce software through a real life test. With this review, I’d like to give you the benefit of what I discovered.

Before getting into the conversion, I prepared myself and the client for future sacrifices we would be making that were common with leaving a custom eCommerce shopping cart to a plug-and-play eCommerce shopping cart solution. We anticipated some loss of flexibility. However, what we discovered was a strong trade-off, because we gained features and certain activities became much easier using Volusion.

Why did I move a customer from a custom cart to an out-of-the-box solution? Here is a quick summary. As a small business, the reasons will look familiar.

• The customer could not afford a programmer.
• Things were starting to break from lack of TLC (i.e., there was deferred maintenance and enhancement of the site needed)
• The site was NOT mobile friendly … this is an understatement and the need was non-negotiable.

It took me less than one month to launch the replacement store. My client is ecstatic about the new store including the look and feel (their greatest concern). The store has been live for over 3 months with no major issues.

Below is my list of pros that makes me a Volusion evangelist, as well as the realistic list of cons.

Pros of Volusion eCommerce Software

Design

My client’s greatest concern was the look and feel of the new store matching their existing site. I had no budget for custom design or a premium template.  While I am sure a custom design from Volusion would have made the difference seamless, the free version was a success for my client.

Mobile Store

It is simple just as all mobile stores should be. In other words, it works - out of the box.

Reviews

The ability for customers to submit review is automatic and comes with a follow up email after each order.

Product Catalog Insertion

I simply exported out my old store and put it into the new store. There was still quite a bit of manual work to be done but that was only because of the new features we wanted to take advantage of. I wanted to take full advantage of the SEO capabilities.

Payment and Shipping Options

Very easy to initiate. It was nice to see PayPal and Google Wallet as standard options.

Pricing

There are several add-ons with additional charges, but nothing I didn’t expect based on my experience with other store launches. For instance, I knew I would have to pay extra for an SSL certificate. What was a nice surprise is when they refunded me the SSL cost when the client needed to change to a different sub-domain. There are no transaction fees.

Customer Support

This is the best feature of Volusion. Their phone customer support is great.  If I had any questions, they were answered within minutes. There was not one single negative experience with their phone support. You will understand why I emphasize phone support once we get to the cons list.

Cons for Volusion eCommerce Software

User Interface

The user interface is not intuitive. This is why I had so much experience with their excellent support team. I highly recommend upgrading to the Gold Premium Support even if it is just for the first month.

Exports

Unless you are a programmer, you will not be able to create custom exports/reports. I was able to hack my way to success for Quickbooks, an affiliate data feed and fulfillment house file. Quotes from a programmer were over $5,000 … certainly not in my client’s budget.  You will want to be creative when it comes to exporting data to other applications.

Technical Support

Technical support can only be reached via email. My experience with technical support was negative. There was a delayed response time. I experienced push back on each email.

Quickbooks Integration

I ended up creating a custom export as the existing solution was not robust enough for my client.

eNewsletter

My client is sticking with Constant Contact for the email newsletter. I was hoping to save money by using Volusion but the email marketing functionality is not there yet.

Bottom line:  No solution is going to be perfect.  Everything involves tradeoffs.  But considering all the features gained for the price, as well as the speed to implementation, Volusion was a good solution.

I hope this hands-on review provides you the insight to make your shopping cart decision. I recommend Volusion if you are a small business owner with no IT personnel and are willing to stay ‘in the box.’

Task Management Tool Asana Gets in Touch With Its Googly Side

Today, the Internet has about 2.4 billion users. Do you know how many of them are using Google products? Anywhere between 42 and 63 percent of them, according to Pingdom. That’s a significant chunk of the Internet relying solely on Google and all its products. In all likelihood, you are among that percentage which uses at least one of its products. So, it goes without saying that it would be advantageous fora task management provider, like Asana, to cater to Google’s user base.

As a result, Asana users will now experience more integration between their favorite task management service and Google in their new update. Here’s what you can expect from it:

• New Chrome Extension - Asana has updated its Google Chrome extension to give you the ability to add tasks to your project queues from your browser while surfing through any other website. You no longer have to log in to the interface to do this, saving you some time. You’ll also get the ability to write notes with this update.
• “Attach From Google Drive” - Until its latest update, Asana users were only able to attach files from their own computers or from Dropbox. The new interface now adds a third option that lets you attach files from Google Drive, giving you a broader span of choices with less hassle. In the past, you had to download files to your computer from your Drive before attaching them.
• New Android App! - The new Asana Android app offers a couple of new features, including push notifications, which keep you informed as projects progress. While you’re away from your home computer, you can also attach files through the app, giving you a new level of flexibility from your mobile device.
• Synchronize With Google Calendar - It’s only natural that a task management service allow you to synchronize with a powerful calendar. Asana has made it possible for you and your employees to sync tasks with your respective calendars from Google, allowing you to harness the features Google provides, such as SMS notifications, to keep you organized and productive!

Nothing says “let’s get to work” like a well-integrated product that intuitively combines the best features from different worlds into one massive collaboration tool. With Asana’s new updates, you’ll get the boost you need to keep up to speed with everything going on in your business while piggybacking on its Google integration.

Task Management Tool Asana Gets in Touch With Its Googly Side

Today, the Internet has about 2.4 billion users. Do you know how many of them are using Google products? Anywhere between 42 and 63 percent of them, according to Pingdom. That’s a significant chunk of the Internet relying solely on Google and all its products. In all likelihood, you are among that percentage which uses at least one of its products. So, it goes without saying that it would be advantageous fora task management provider, like Asana, to cater to Google’s user base.

As a result, Asana users will now experience more integration between their favorite task management service and Google in their new update. Here’s what you can expect from it:

• New Chrome Extension - Asana has updated its Google Chrome extension to give you the ability to add tasks to your project queues from your browser while surfing through any other website. You no longer have to log in to the interface to do this, saving you some time. You’ll also get the ability to write notes with this update.
• “Attach From Google Drive” - Until its latest update, Asana users were only able to attach files from their own computers or from Dropbox. The new interface now adds a third option that lets you attach files from Google Drive, giving you a broader span of choices with less hassle. In the past, you had to download files to your computer from your Drive before attaching them.
• New Android App! - The new Asana Android app offers a couple of new features, including push notifications, which keep you informed as projects progress. While you’re away from your home computer, you can also attach files through the app, giving you a new level of flexibility from your mobile device.
• Synchronize With Google Calendar - It’s only natural that a task management service allow you to synchronize with a powerful calendar. Asana has made it possible for you and your employees to sync tasks with your respective calendars from Google, allowing you to harness the features Google provides, such as SMS notifications, to keep you organized and productive!

Nothing says “let’s get to work” like a well-integrated product that intuitively combines the best features from different worlds into one massive collaboration tool. With Asana’s new updates, you’ll get the boost you need to keep up to speed with everything going on in your business while piggybacking on its Google integration.

Sole Proprietorship Revenues in Long Term Decline

Source: Create from data from the IRS Statistics of Income

Here’s some sobering news for those people thinking of going into business for themselves. The average revenues of sole proprietorships has been trending downward for the last 50 years!

As the figure above shows, the average receipts per U.S. sole proprietorship has dropped by two-thirds in inflation-adjusted terms since 1966. Because three quarters of all U.S. businesses are sole proprietorships, this trend is not good for small business.

Revenues at the average sole proprietorship appear to be dropping because their numbers have been growing rapidly. The count of proprietorships has been increasing faster than the population for several decades, driving up the per capita number. In 1957 there were 4.6 sole proprietors per 100 Americans; in 2010 there were 7.5.

In 2010, revenues from sole proprietorships were very similar to what they were in 1957 - down only 5.3 percent in inflation-adjusted terms. Relatively constant revenues are being spread across more and more businesses, it appears.

The increase in the per capita number of sole proprietorships - and the corresponding decline in the revenues of each - is troubling because of what this decline is correlated with: a drop in new employer firm formation.

Between 1977 (when employer firm formation figures are first available) and 2010 (when the latest recent sole proprietorship numbers can be found), the new business creation rate and the average revenues of a sole proprietorship correlate 0.75 - a correlation of 1.00 means that two numbers move in perfect concert. As the revenue of the average sole proprietorship has trended downward so too has the per capita rate of new employer business creation.

While correlation does not imply causation, the sizable decline in both measures should prompt policy makers to ask what’s going on. From 1977 to 2010, the per capita rate of new employer firm formation declined by 50 percent and real revenues at the average sole proprietorship dropped by 58 percent.

Other forms of business don’t appear to be making up for the decline in the average revenues of sole proprietorships. A similar decline appears to be present with corporations. Between 1977 and 2009 - the latest year for which data on corporations are available - the number of corporations increased by 159 percent. Over the same period, the inflation-adjusted revenue of the average corporation dropped by 36 percent.

While much more detailed investigation would be necessary before drawing any firm conclusions, the data suggests that rapid growth in the number sole proprietorships over the past 50 years might not be as beneficial as it appears at first glance.

Discovery of possible new ransomware campaign targeting websites

Websites are being hacked and defaced with “the worst of the worst” child sexual abuse images.

According to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), businesses' websites have been hacked and child abuse images uploaded, meaning that not only is the reputation of the company impacted, but users are seeing these images.

The IWF said it had received 227 reports of this happening over the past six weeks. In such an instance, a user would visit a compromised website and unknowingly be redirected to a folder, created by the attackers, that contained the child sexual abuse images.

As a third party has set up the ‘diversion' from one site to another and planted the folder of the images, the administrators of the adult site and the hacked site would not know this is happening.

Sarah Smith, technical researcher at the IWF, said: “We hadn't seen significant numbers of hacked websites for around two years, and then suddenly in June we started seeing this happening more and more.

“It shows how someone, not looking for child sexual abuse images, can stumble across it. The original adult content the internet user is viewing is far removed from anything related to young people or children.

“We've received reports from people distressed about what they've seen. Our reporters have been extremely diligent in explaining exactly what happened, enabling our analysts to re-trace their steps and take action against the child sexual abuse images.

“Since identifying this trend we've been tracking it and feeding into police forces and our sister hotlines abroad.”

The IWF said that hackers also hijacked links on adult websites so that if a visitor clicked on one of the affected pornographic images or videos, they would be directed to the offending material.

Security consultant and blogger Graham Cluley said that many legitimate websites do get hit in this way and are defaced, and he understood why the IWF needed to do something about it.

However he told SC Magazine that his feeling was that this was tied to ransomware, where users will be told that there is material on their computer and they need to get their PC cleaned. “I am trying to work out why this has occurred, there is the possibility of damaging the reputation of companies who are hosting the material, although the servers are not directly linked to the store,” he said.

“Or it could be a hacktivist group trying to get people to go to a website to get them to download malware. But the IWF said that the links are based on legitimate adult websites; ransomware is a way of tricking someone and someone who has been exposed to child abuse images is not going to go to PC World or the police, they will want it to go away.”

Cluley also believed that users and businesses will be concerned about this, as the attackers are being more aggressive in a very effective form of social engineering. He recommended learning about ransomware, and to make sure orphan servers are patched and cleaned up.

Online Outsourcing Services Give Small Businesses New Options For Getting Things Done

The days of keeping a personal assistant on hand to pick up your dry cleaning or schedule your meetings are long gone. With automation, business owners now craft their own correspondence and make their own phone calls, often from the car on the way to a meeting.

As you look at your calendar at the beginning of each day, chances are you see tasks that merit a higher level of priority than others. Those meetings with clients and service providers can make a big difference in growing your business, but without someone to do those daily, more tedious activities, your business will eventually suffer.

Luckily, technology has made it easy to outsource some of those tasks, freeing up your time to focus on the more important items on your to-do list. Below are a few tasks you can outsource to online providers at minimal cost to your bottom line and the outsourcing tools that will help you.

Errands

Don’t have time to run by the grocery store? Need someone to pick up a gift for your wife? TaskRabbit connects busy people with pre-screened help locally. The site features more than 10,000 TaskRabbits nationwide who can handle a wide variety of tasks. You can also check reviews of previous customers to determine whether a TaskRabbit is the right person to handle your task.

Recently, TaskRabbit launched its business solutions site. Noting that some customers were using the site to locate temporary workers, the site decided to honor this need by providing background-screened temp workers who can be interviewed via live chat. Currently, the site is specializing in providing workers who can handle administrative tasks such as data entry and customer service. It’s a great way for a business to either find a fill-in worker for staff vacations or to try out a new worker before committing to long-time employment.

Professional Tasks

Need a business proposal for a big meeting with an investor? Want to pay an expert to craft a list of sales leads? Elance is one of several outsourcing tools that give you the opportunity to post your job and choose from a variety of proposals. With a membership of more than 500,000 businesses and two million freelancers, Elance is revolutionizing the way businesses handle projects. Instead of hiring a full-time web developer, you now have the option to pay a talented designer to design your website, providing updates as needed. Need content for that site? Don’t worry. One of Elance’s 10,000+ workers can do the job for you.

Advice and Services

Whether you’re in need of legal advice or want to pay someone to do your next PowerPoint presentation, Fiverr is a great service for finding affordable talent. While the site is now far from the original “everything for five dollars” concept-more than half of all tasks sell for more than five dollars-the cost of each project is straightforward. Many workers offer “add on” work, where the buyer can choose additional services at a higher cost.

I.T.

At one time, a new business had to pay for servers, workstations, and software just to get started. Welcome to the era of the Cloud. Services like Office 365 and Windows Azure allow businesses to turn the day-to-day management of technology over to the experts. All a business owner needs is a wireless router, a cell phone, and a laptop, PC, or tablet to get started. With Cloud technology comes security concerns, however, so be sure to research a provider carefully before entrusting your data.

Reception Service

Every serious business, no matter the size, needs a live, friendly receptionist to answer the phone. In the internet era, businesses have numerous options that don’t involve paying a full-time employee to man your front desk. Ruby Receptionists lets businesses forward an existing number (or be given a new toll-free number) to its services. Monday through Friday between 5 a.m. and 6 p.m. Pacific, a friendly, live receptionist will answer the line and forward calls to the phone numbers you specify. Receptionists can also provide information such as directions to your office, your hours of operation, and even descriptions of the services you provide. Plans start at $239 a month and include unlimited talk time, unlimited voicemail time, and real-time call reports.

The ability of outsourcing tools has leveled the playing field for small businesses, allowing them to compete with much larger businesses without leasing a four-story office space and hiring a staff of hundreds. By choosing the right outsource providers, you can spend less time dealing with the minutiae of daily life and more time attracting clients and wowing investors.

Online Outsourcing Services Give Small Businesses New Options For Getting Things Done

The days of keeping a personal assistant on hand to pick up your dry cleaning or schedule your meetings are long gone. With automation, business owners now craft their own correspondence and make their own phone calls, often from the car on the way to a meeting.

As you look at your calendar at the beginning of each day, chances are you see tasks that merit a higher level of priority than others. Those meetings with clients and service providers can make a big difference in growing your business, but without someone to do those daily, more tedious activities, your business will eventually suffer.

Luckily, technology has made it easy to outsource some of those tasks, freeing up your time to focus on the more important items on your to-do list. Below are a few tasks you can outsource to online providers at minimal cost to your bottom line and the outsourcing tools that will help you.

Errands

Don’t have time to run by the grocery store? Need someone to pick up a gift for your wife? TaskRabbit connects busy people with pre-screened help locally. The site features more than 10,000 TaskRabbits nationwide who can handle a wide variety of tasks. You can also check reviews of previous customers to determine whether a TaskRabbit is the right person to handle your task.

Recently, TaskRabbit launched its business solutions site. Noting that some customers were using the site to locate temporary workers, the site decided to honor this need by providing background-screened temp workers who can be interviewed via live chat. Currently, the site is specializing in providing workers who can handle administrative tasks such as data entry and customer service. It’s a great way for a business to either find a fill-in worker for staff vacations or to try out a new worker before committing to long-time employment.

Professional Tasks

Need a business proposal for a big meeting with an investor? Want to pay an expert to craft a list of sales leads? Elance is one of several outsourcing tools that give you the opportunity to post your job and choose from a variety of proposals. With a membership of more than 500,000 businesses and two million freelancers, Elance is revolutionizing the way businesses handle projects. Instead of hiring a full-time web developer, you now have the option to pay a talented designer to design your website, providing updates as needed. Need content for that site? Don’t worry. One of Elance’s 10,000+ workers can do the job for you.

Advice and Services

Whether you’re in need of legal advice or want to pay someone to do your next PowerPoint presentation, Fiverr is a great service for finding affordable talent. While the site is now far from the original “everything for five dollars” concept-more than half of all tasks sell for more than five dollars-the cost of each project is straightforward. Many workers offer “add on” work, where the buyer can choose additional services at a higher cost.

I.T.

At one time, a new business had to pay for servers, workstations, and software just to get started. Welcome to the era of the Cloud. Services like Office 365 and Windows Azure allow businesses to turn the day-to-day management of technology over to the experts. All a business owner needs is a wireless router, a cell phone, and a laptop, PC, or tablet to get started. With Cloud technology comes security concerns, however, so be sure to research a provider carefully before entrusting your data.

Reception Service

Every serious business, no matter the size, needs a live, friendly receptionist to answer the phone. In the internet era, businesses have numerous options that don’t involve paying a full-time employee to man your front desk. Ruby Receptionists lets businesses forward an existing number (or be given a new toll-free number) to its services. Monday through Friday between 5 a.m. and 6 p.m. Pacific, a friendly, live receptionist will answer the line and forward calls to the phone numbers you specify. Receptionists can also provide information such as directions to your office, your hours of operation, and even descriptions of the services you provide. Plans start at $239 a month and include unlimited talk time, unlimited voicemail time, and real-time call reports.

The ability of outsourcing tools has leveled the playing field for small businesses, allowing them to compete with much larger businesses without leasing a four-story office space and hiring a staff of hundreds. By choosing the right outsource providers, you can spend less time dealing with the minutiae of daily life and more time attracting clients and wowing investors.

Darknet sites compromised and taken offline following arrest

A man suspected of running the most popular hosting service underpinning the darknet has been arrested in Ireland.

According to media reports, Eric Eoin Marques is currently being held in Ireland on an extradition request by the FBI, relating to four charges to alleged child pornography offences.

The websites he managed offered a high degree of anonymity to users and server administrators than other sites on the public web, as they were accessible only via the Tor routing service.

His arrest on Saturday coincided with mass outages affecting popular services such as Tor Mail, HackBB and the Hidden Wiki that are run on Freedom Hosting, a company largely suspected to be operated by Marques.

Prior to Marques arrest, a new JavaScript exploit (posted to Pastebin) targeting Mozilla FireFox version 17 - the same version bundled with the Tor client - appeared on some Freedom Hosting darknet sites including Tormail.

The exploit, under investigation by Reddit users, Tor developers, and Mozilla, appeared only to attempt to reveal the identities of Tor users visiting Freedom Hosting sites by way of an iframe script that quietly generated a universally unique identifier and redirected users to a Verizon Business IP address located near Washington DC.

The discovery of the exploit days before Marques' arrest fuelled suspicions that the attack was orchestrated by US authorities in a bid to identify users of Freedom Host child pornography sites.

One of the earliest accounts of the exploit came from an administrator of the infamous 4Pedo forum who warned users that 'unknown JavaScript' had been inserted across Freedom Hosting darknet sites including popular email service Tormail.

The exploit targeted FireFox vulnerability (MFSA 2013-53) that was patched in the latest versions of Firefox including Firefox Extended Support, Mozilla security lead Daniel Veditz confirmed.

"Since this attack was found on Tor hidden services presumably that is because the Tor Browser Bundle is based on Firefox ESR-17. Users running the most recent TBB have all the fixes that were applied to Firefox ESR 17.0.7 and were also not at risk from this attack," he said.

While Tor developers continue to work on ways to protect their users, developer Jacob Applebaum said users should disable JavaScript, which is enabled by default for usability purposes.

A statement by the Tor project said that it had been notified that a large number of hidden service addresses had disappeared from the Tor network on Saturday. “There are a variety of rumours about a hosting company for hidden services that it is suddenly offline, has been breached, or attackers have placed a JavaScript exploit on their website,” it said.

Freedom Hosting was the most popular hosting service on the Tor network. It came under the public spotlight in 2011 after vigilantes aligned with the Anonymous collective warned the service to remove child abuse images residing on its servers.

Darknet sites compromised and taken offline following arrest

A man suspected of running the most popular hosting service underpinning the darknet has been arrested in Ireland.

According to media reports, Eric Eoin Marques is currently being held in Ireland on an extradition request by the FBI, relating to four charges to alleged child pornography offences.

The websites he managed offered a high degree of anonymity to users and server administrators than other sites on the public web, as they were accessible only via the Tor routing service.

His arrest on Saturday coincided with mass outages affecting popular services such as Tor Mail, HackBB and the Hidden Wiki that are run on Freedom Hosting, a company largely suspected to be operated by Marques.

Prior to Marques arrest, a new JavaScript exploit (posted to Pastebin) targeting Mozilla FireFox version 17 - the same version bundled with the Tor client - appeared on some Freedom Hosting darknet sites including Tormail.

The exploit, under investigation by Reddit users, Tor developers, and Mozilla, appeared only to attempt to reveal the identities of Tor users visiting Freedom Hosting sites by way of an iframe script that quietly generated a universally unique identifier and redirected users to a Verizon Business IP address located near Washington DC.

The discovery of the exploit days before Marques' arrest fuelled suspicions that the attack was orchestrated by US authorities in a bid to identify users of Freedom Host child pornography sites.

One of the earliest accounts of the exploit came from an administrator of the infamous 4Pedo forum who warned users that 'unknown JavaScript' had been inserted across Freedom Hosting darknet sites including popular email service Tormail.

The exploit targeted FireFox vulnerability (MFSA 2013-53) that was patched in the latest versions of Firefox including Firefox Extended Support, Mozilla security lead Daniel Veditz confirmed.

"Since this attack was found on Tor hidden services presumably that is because the Tor Browser Bundle is based on Firefox ESR-17. Users running the most recent TBB have all the fixes that were applied to Firefox ESR 17.0.7 and were also not at risk from this attack," he said.

While Tor developers continue to work on ways to protect their users, developer Jacob Applebaum said users should disable JavaScript, which is enabled by default for usability purposes.

A statement by the Tor project said that it had been notified that a large number of hidden service addresses had disappeared from the Tor network on Saturday. “There are a variety of rumours about a hosting company for hidden services that it is suddenly offline, has been breached, or attackers have placed a JavaScript exploit on their website,” it said.

Freedom Hosting was the most popular hosting service on the Tor network. It came under the public spotlight in 2011 after vigilantes aligned with the Anonymous collective warned the service to remove child abuse images residing on its servers.