Success Stories
Elizabeth Carmel elizabethcarmel.com
ElizabethCarmel.com is in the Business of Making People Happy Elizabeth Carmel is a professional fine art photographer specializing in unique, expressive landscapes and “waterscapes”. Elizabeth’s fine art prints combine dramatic photography, vivid colors, and artistic touches to create new, captivating visions of the natural world. Alongside her husband Olof, who also shares the same passion for photography, they started selling their breathtaking photographs of Lake Tahoe and Sierra landscapes at art shows in the region about 12 years ago. As their photographs became increasing popular, Elizabeth and Olof decided to open a storefront in downtown Truckee where they currently have a successful retail gallery. With business growth in mind, the next step on their agenda was to expand globally through an online presence.
Goals: • Increase online sales • Easy site usability • Improve SEO rankings and visibility of products • Increase awareness • Obtain a positive customer experience
Fast Facts • Elizabeth does her own printing on fine art paper or canvas with long-life pigmented inks. • Elizabeth’s prints have been displayed at the California Museum of Photography and the Nevada Museum of Art. • In 2009 Elizabeth published her second book of Sierra photographs titled “The Changing Range of Light”.
Results: • Increased web traffic and online sales • Efficient order processing • Accelerated improvement on SEO rankings • Enhanced communication with customers
• Increased customer confidence in web ordering security 1
The Challenge Knowing very little about web development, Elizabeth struggled with finding an ecommerce solution that provided easy usability and high quality support. Initially experimenting with a flash website, Elizabeth quickly realized how difficult it was to update the site content and implement SEO practices.
The Solution Elizabeth read online reviews and researched features from multiple ecommerce solutions. Due to the positive customer feedback and easy to use backend software for non-programmers, Elizabeth decided that Volusion was their best option.
Volusion offers the following features and benefits that were critical to the success of ElizabethCarmel. com: •
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Out of this World™ Support – The free 24x7x365 live support has been an invaluable resource for Elizabeth. As questions come up, Volusion‘s representatives are ready to handle and explain any issue quickly and thoroughly. Email System and Newsletter Features – Having a built-in email system enables Elizabeth to easily build newsletters and improve communication with customers through one central location. Convenient Order Processing - Elizabeth can directly print shipping labels while conveniently and efficiently tracking orders every step of the way. Web Design Services – Volusion web designer worked with Elizabeth to understand her vision and creative needs. Integrated SEO – Site is easily search engine optimized, resulting in top-ranked Google pages for target keywords without third party SEO programs, giving the business immediate credibility. Stringent Security – Data is secured against theft or manipulation with integrated IP blocking, 24x7 surveillance and advanced encryption. PCI/CISP certification also ensures maximum protection of card-holder data. Volusion provides Elizabeth with a guarantee that her customers’ credit card information is securely collected, protected and stored.
The Outcome TheCarmelGallery.com launched in spring 2010 with ElizabethCarmel. com launching soon after in October. Elizabeth’s main goal with TheCarmelGallery.com was to increase awareness of their storefront in Truckee. To take it a step further, the main goal of ElizabethCarmel. com was to improve SEO rankings and improve online sales. As a result,
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Our Site • Elizabeth first launched TheCarmelGallery.com in spring 2010 then ElizabethCarmel. com in October.
• Within the first month of the launch, online sales for ElizabethCarmel.com exceeded TheCarmelGallery.com by 125%.
within the first month, online sales for ElizabethCarmel.com exceeded TheCarmelGallery.com by 125%. With increased web traffic, online sales, and newsletter sign-ups, both sites have been very successful.
Lessons Learned Through the trials and tribulations of owning a business, what kept Elizabeth going was her business philosophy: “Never lose sight of the fact that we are in the business of making people happy.” Elizabeth’s biggest piece of advice for other storeowners is simple: “Do a lot of follow up with customers via email news, social marketing, and personal emails.” She understands that customer happiness is the basis of company success.
“Volusion has helped me introduce and sell my art work to a larger audience outside of my community. Continually improving the website and reaching out to my audience has been a lot easier since I switched to Volusion,” says Elizabeth from ElizabethCarmel.com.
“It always amazes me how easy it is to add my new prints with Volusion,” says Elizabeth from ElizabethCarmel.com
www.volusion.com Send us a note. sales@volusion.com Give us a call. 800.646.3517 x2 Experience Out of this World Support™
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About Volusion Volusion is the leader in shopping cart software for online businesses. Over the last 10 years, thousands of companies have used Volusion to succeed online, including market leaders such as Disney, Motorola, Chicago Tribune, Michigan State University and Crutchfield. For more information about Volusion, please visit http://www. volusion.com. For more articles and resources to help the growth and success of your online business, visit Volusion’s Ecommerce Blog at http://onlinebusiness.volusion. com.