Volusion Continues to See Success: An Interview With COO/CMO Clay Olivier

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May 3, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team

Today on ZippyCart, we debuted our expert review of the Volusion ecommerce shopping cart solution. Volusion is a well-known name in the ecommerce industry that continues to grow and see success as the world of online shopping evolves. They are considered by many to provide both an amazing customer experience and a suite of features that will help any merchant grow their online business with a competitive edge. We took a moment to talk with Clay Olivier, Volusion’s COO and CMO, to find out what Volusion has in store for 2010 and how the company works.

1. What makes Volusion stand out among other ecommerce software solutions?

Hands down, the biggest difference between Volusion and other solutions is that we give our customers everything needed to succeed. Our competitors will give you bits and pieces, but they ultimately leave it up to you to put together the details. We also provide all of the tools an online business could want up front, that way our clients can grow into the software as their business grows. That’s why we have companies of all sizes using our software – it’s so scalable that it will equip you for anything.

In other words, we look at building an online store as if you’re building a retail store. Some providers will give you what you need to build a foundation, but you can’t run a business without the walls, electricity and cash registers. We give you all of that and you grow into it as needed. That’s where things like our gift registry and affiliate system come into play – you don’t need them when you’re painting the walls of your store, but you definitely want them once guests come inside the doors.

I firmly believe that we’re different because of our innovation. We’ve delivered a lot of “firsts” in the industry. Way back when we first got started, we introduced the now industry-standard one page checkout. We were also the first to integrate sales and social media with our Social Store Builder. Recently we’ve stepped up our game by releasing our credit card protection service, Fraud Score and are currently getting in front of the mobile commerce wave by releasing our free feature, Volusion mCommerce.

We also keep things as simple as possible which makes life easier for our team and our merchants. We don’t have any transaction fees like other providers and we don’t make our clients sign long term contracts. We have to earn our clients’ business each month, and that really drives us to work harder each day. A big part of this includes our free, unlimited 24/7 phone support to all of our merchants. In this day and age, people are working around the clock and we want to be there at all times.

We also know that our merchants deserve the best in online security to protect themselves and their customers. Because of this, we’ve invested time and dollars to ensure we provide the highest level of security by achieving PCI/CISP certification. For us and our customers, compliance just isn’t enough.

Volusion has over a decade of experience in creating innovative, user-friendly software that allows online storeowners to take control of their business. I sincerely believe that it’s our focus on helping our customers realize their business dreams that makes us shine compared to other providers. I also believe that this is why industry leaders have given us the honor of providing multiple awards and accolades.

2. What are some of the newest features to be added to Volusion?

There’s been quite a few – we’ve rolled out several major additions to our platform, all in Q1.

We were very excited to release our newest credit card protection service, Fraud Score. This new service screens multiple fields across a massive database network to conveniently inform our customers if their orders are at risk of fraud. Whenever I was running my online store with Volusion, I got burned with some fraudulent orders and lost precious time and money. The entire experience was frustrating, so we wanted to make sure our customers had some form of protection from fraudsters. I’m proud to say that the service has really helped a lot of our merchants by preventing fraudulent orders before they happen.

Finally, we’re wrapping up the beta process of Volusion mCommerce, which creates a fully-optimized mobile storefront. It’s clear that more and more online shoppers are accessing the Internet through their mobile devices, so we wanted to provide our customers with an opportunity to take advantage of that. We truly believe that mobile commerce is the wave of the future, and we want to be steering the ship.

I’m very excited about mCommerce, and our clients are too. One of our merchants, Andrea of Repeat Possessions, told us how important mobile is to the future of her business and how the new mobile friendly feature will help her grow even further. It’s this type of feedback that excites us to continue innovating.

In regards to our core platform, our development team has been hard at work cranking out new additions. The latest release included dozens of new additions. Some of the most popular include:

• MyRewards, which allows merchants to offer a customer loyalty program through their stores
• Multi-language site capabilities so a website can be crafted in any language
• Gift registry integration to allow shoppers to add products to a larger registry list
• Soft add to cart to help streamline the shopping process and boost conversions
• AddThis integration so shoppers can share products across dozens of social networking sites

3. Can you tell us about some of the top merchants using Volusion?
We’re proud to power online storefronts for thousands upon thousands of merchants, spanning all sizes, industries and geographies. We’ve seen SMB customers achieve more than a million dollars in sales, showcase their products at the Grammys, make television debuts, and increase their sales by 400% after switching to our platform.

It’s a true testament to the scalability of our platform that major enterprise clients can easily manage their entire online presence with our shopping cart software.

Some of our larger clients include Disney, Motorola, 3M and Kinerase. These industry leaders have trusted their business with us, and we take that very seriously. Most of our enterprise level customers have spoken highly of our open API to streamline business processes and the branding flexibility that Volusion offers. They are also very appreciative of the 24/7 support and the drastic cost savings in IT investments upon launching their new Volusion site.

4. Can you give us more insight on Volusion and PCI/CISP?

There’s quite a bit of confusion out there regarding PCI/CISP certification and PCI compliance. The major difference is that PCI/CISP certified companies are held to a much higher standard of accountability than their compliant counterparts. Instead of following a set of guidelines on our own, as a PCI/CISP certified company, we have to achieve the following extras:

• Invest in our hardware and hosting facilities to meet more stringent security standards
• Receive approval from an independent auditor that performs on-site inspection of our facilities
• Pass a rigorous screening process in order to remain on Visa’s list of certified providers

Despite the extra time and investment to achieve PCI/CISP certification, we know it’s essential for any online business at this point in the game. In other words, we invested millions to beef up our security infrastructure because we had to. The risk far outweighed the investment for us and our clients.

I strongly encourage all merchants to check the status of their provider on Visa’s list. If not, then no amount of marketing spin will change the fact that they’re not PCI certified. And if they’re not certified, then your business isn’t as safe as it should be. This can have big consequences down the road.

5. Can you tell us about any future updates or change to the Volusion ecommerce solution in 2010?

Sure. As I mentioned earlier, Fraud Score was a huge win for us. Our team spent over a year perfecting that product and we’re very proud of the end result. It’s really a revolutionary tool in that it takes so much data, aggregates it, and returns it in a format that is easily digestible by the end user.

Volusion mCommerce is going to be a major update to the platform. The beta process is drawing to a close and we’ve received a great deal of insight to help better the feature before general release.

As a whole, we’re consistently working on our platform to enhance the experience for all of our customers, regardless of size or industry. We’re focusing on ease of use and creating exciting new additions, integrations and features to further streamline our merchants’ everyday business processes. We’ve definitely got some exciting things coming down the pipeline, so stay tuned!

6. Can you tell us about the Volusion Foundation?

Gladly. We started the Volusion Foundation several years ago as a way to contribute to a cause that is greater than ourselves. Kevin and I both have a strong belief in helping others, which is why we decided to launch it. The idea is pretty simple – give 1% time, 1% product and 1% revenue to deserving charities.

For 1% time, we give all of our employees 2 days paid time off to volunteer for any organization of their choice. With our Stores to Change the World program, we provide 10 free Gold stores to nonprofits each month. And, the 1% revenue is pretty self-explanatory as we give 1% of our yearly revenue to a deserving charity.

It’s truly been a fulfilling experience for all of us at the company and I really think that it positively affects our team to think beyond ourselves.

7. Can you tell us a bit about what a typical day is like at Volusion?

The best way for me to describe it is hectically rewarding. I’m constantly impressed with the hard work and dedication from our team and honestly find it hard to believe that we’ve grown so much in such a short period of time.

Of course there are meetings and projects and deadlines, but a typical day at Volusion is truly about the people. We’ve got an open environment and it’s astounding to see how many great ideas are coming from the team. Just walking around the office is a great way to sum up our culture. You’ll see people from different departments together in a room hammering out the details of a project when across the hall you’ll see another group shooting their Nerf guns while on a break. Everyone says ‘hello’ to each other and I never see any egos. It’s really refreshing.

I’m proud of our team for creating and keeping such a fun, innovative and open place to work. That spirit shows via our customer interaction in striving to always deliver an exceptional experience. A testament to this is that we have all kinds of our customers’ products around the office. We’ve got a huge collection of teddy bears, an awesome bonsai tree, paintings, and all sorts of things lying around. Our team has done a great job of building personal and professional relationships with our clients, and I’m always excited to see what our customers are doing to move the ecommerce revolution forward.