Top 5 Volusion Features You May Have Missed

By Allison Smith

The Volusion ecommerce software is pretty robust. With over 40,000 stores with different needs, there are all kinds of settings, fields, tools and features to help make running your store a little bit easier. We asked members of our support team and have come up with a list of the top 5 useful features you may not know about but might want to use for your store.

Make a Category Act as a Link to Another Page

In the advanced info section of each of your categories, there is a field where you can tell that category to redirect to another page. This is a great feature if you want to add a link to your blog, your wholesale website or even a social media page. You can just make a category, set it to appear in the storefront nav menu of your choice, and fill in this field to make it redirect without the hassle of coding changes. This will also come in handy for links within your site. If you want a category to appear in the top and left navigation menus, you can simply create your first category the way you want it and create a second category using the ‘alternate url’ field that brings customers to the same place.

Learn more: http://support.volusion.com/article/how-duplicate-category

Create Gift Certificates

Creating gift certificates without an order can be really helpful in your marketing endeavors. If you want to make store credit a prize in a local raffle or use a deals site like LivingSocial or Groupon, the ability to offer a gift certificate code is a great incentive to get people shopping with your store. With this code, any customer can redeem that store credit without you having to know who will be using it in advance or have an order placed to purchase it. Simply decide the amount your gift certificate will be worth, attribute a unique redemption code, and upload it to your store. The upload method also allows you to create several at a time, which is great if you are running a big promotion to bring in new shoppers.

Learn more: http://support.volusion.com/article/how-import-gift-certificates

Automatically Set a Category to Show Products in Its Subcategories

If you’ve set up all your categories just the way you want them, but you don’t want to have to update the main category every time something changes, this feature is for you. For example, if you’re selling western wear, and you have a Boots category, and under that subcategories for Men’s and Women’s Boots. Enabling this setting will automatically add all the boots you’ve added to the Men’s and Women’s categories to your main Boots category. This configuration gives your customers an idea of what to expect if they continue to drill down into your subcategories. Listing products in the main category also adds an opportunity for something to catch a shopper’s eye earlier in the process so they have a chance to find exactly what they are looking for without browsing further.

Learn more: http://support.volusion.com/article/can-i-have-items-subcategories-display-category-above

Create an Add to Cart Link

There are many ways to link to your website, and they are all appropriate in different situations. Sometimes, you want to show people the homepage, other times you want to bring them straight to a specific product. What you may not have known is there is another way of linking that will actually add the product to the cart when it is clicked. This can come in handy if you have another website displaying your products and want them to come back to the main site for purchase. The “add to cart” link is a great way to showcase certain promotions on social media or your blog. This special link will start the customer further in the buying funnel and create a more seamless experience if you are using calls to action like ‘buy now’ or ‘add to cart.’

Learn more: http://support.volusion.com/article/linking-products-3rd-party-web-site

Mange your store with the Volusion Mobile App

There are many features to help your store display differently to customers, but we haven’t forgotten about you – the store owner. The Volusion app is designed to make your life easier so you don’t have to run home or find a computer to make a change to the website. If you notice a typo or get some news from your manufacturer on the go – you can make those adjustments straight from your phone. Stay in the know and check the reporting and health of your store anywhere you have a signal. We just made some updates to the app, and you can use it to process orders, add new products, update your inventory and more.

Learn more: http://www.volusion.com/mobile-commerce-management

Have you tried any of these settings? Do you use some Volusion features that we haven’t mentioned and want to share? Let us know in the comments!

Via:: Volusion Online Business