Yahoo Store is a turn key ecommerce solution. When you rent a Y!Store you get web hosting, software to build a catalog, management & marketing tools, but most importantly, you get access to Yahoo! Shopping, a fantastic source of traffic. Many Yahoo! Store owners get the majority of their sales from this traffic. |
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Use your browser (Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer) and the Yahoo! Store Manager/Editor to build and maintain your store using the Yahoo! Store EDITOR. You can log in from anywhere in the world and look at your orders, requests, and statistics SIDEBAR - Rob on Vacation All you need is product information & graphics, your business terms and conditions, and the methods of payment you accept to build your store. To turn your store on, Yahoo! requires that you have a merchant account with a credit card processor so they can verify that you have the ability to process the crediit card numbers you collect via their secure server. Yahoo! can also host your domain name. Using NETWORK SOLUTIONS you can reserve your domain name so www.mycompany.com points to your Yahoo! Store. Y!Store can also redirect email to your POP accounts so Ed@MyCompany.com goes to your email box. | | Y!Shopping: STAR WARS T-SHIRT Story In May 1999, just before the release of STAR WARS: Phantom Menace, Y!Shopping featured a link to all of the STAR WARS products currently on Yahoo! Shopping. We just happened to have added 13 Star Wars T-Shirts to our online store the day before. All of a sudden our t-shirts page was getting 1500 people a day looking at it. This generated more than enough revenue to pay for our Y!Store rent for the next year in a matter of days. Want to know what's hot? Yahoo! will even tell you what people are looking to buy. Every week Yahoo releases the YAHOO! SHOPPING SEARCH - TOP 100 SEARCHES report which shows you what customers are looking for in Yahoo! Shopping. This list is comprised of popular consumer goods categories like computers and electronics, brand names like SONY and NIKE, and fads like Pokemon and DragonballZ. Stores with great customer ratings get ranked higher in Yahoo! Shopping. Every time someone shops with you they have the chance to rate you (if you participate in Yahoo! Shopping). About 10% of the folks who buy will rate you which tends to skew your ratings a little. Customers who are very satisfied and customers who are very dissatisfied will rate you. The exact ratio Yahoo! uses is a trade secret, but the key is somewhere around 90% positive ratings. If you ship products very quickly and keep in contact with your customers, you can build up a solid Y!rating in very little time. You can also buy additional advertising in Yahoo! Shopping - Yahoo! Shopping features very large national retailers as "Featured Merchants." These stores pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their Yahoo! Shopping listings in front of the thousands of customers using Y!Shopping. If you get enough traffic from specialized directory pages or specific item searches, you can buy banner space, product space, and button space for as little as $5,000. | | There are three levels of STORE EDITOR for the various experience levels of USERS. BEGINNER, REGULAR, & ADVANCED editing. The first level is really only good for learning the most basic Y!Store concepts. The Regular interface shows most of the features you'll be using on a daily basis. The ADVANCED EDITOR gives you access to everything you'll need to customize your Yahoo! Store from RTML templates to database uploads. Adding, Deleting, Editing & Moving products around is simple. It's very easy to teach your staff the most useful functions in a matter of minutes. If they're sophisticated enough to have an email account and browse the web, then they'll be able to handle the most common applications of a Yahoo! Store. Want to change the price on an item? Login at http://store.yahoo.com. Select the EDITOR. Go to the item page. Click EDIT. Change the Price. Click UPDATE. Go to the home page. Click PUBLISH. The price is now changed. You can also restrict different users to what information they can see by using the ACCESS feature. There are 15 predetermined looks with colors and fonts. The majority of stores on Y!Shopping use these looks, so if you want a unique look, you have to try a little harder, but these are a step up from the default gray templates. (Yuck!) Yahoo! Store offers customizable templates so beginners can get pretty good results with predefined HOME, SECTION, and PRODUCT page templates. Once you format the templates with the colors, fonts, and buttons you want, adding a new product or section that looks great is as easy as clicking one button to upload an image and write the product name, description, and price. Each product has its own separate page using static html which is better for search engines. Most ecommerce solutions rely on databases that dynamically generate the html as you are looking for something. Looking for POWERPUFF Underoos at a major entertainment e-tailer? Their database creates a page that lists all of the available POWERPUFF articles available for sale. Unfortunately, when the search engine robot comes crawling across their site, these pages don't get indexed. Advanced users can place html inside templates for a unique look. You can format text with html tags, add extra graphics stored in your FILES library, add simple forms, and even use your own HTML documents using the RAW-HTML template. Bulk uploads for larger catalogs are available for advanced users. If you have a database or text file of your products, you can use the BULK UPLOAD feature so you don't have to manually add each product. I created a 3500 item store using a distributor's catalog on a CD-ROM in about 3 hours one night. Power Users & Developers can build custom looks using RTML template scripting language. If you understand HTML tables, RTML isn't that hard. This proprietary language has very little documentation, but there is a group of enthusiasts in the Ystore Clubs forum who share RTML secrets and tips with each other. | | Receive Orders via email, FAX, or Secure Server Login. There are three basic ways that Store Owners are notified when a customer places an order: Email, FAX, and from the Manager. Most Y!Store owners get an email from Yahoo! whenever a customer places an order. Unless you have encrypted email, you do not receive sensitive customer data such as credit card numbers and expiration dates in the email. This email also shows customer comments, so if there is a question about a product or order, you can simply reply to the order because the reply address is the one your customer input on the secure order form. The second way is via FAX. You add your FAX number and usually within seconds of a customer placing an order, the Yahoo! FAX server sends you a FAX that has all of the information needed to fill the order including credit card information. This FAX can also be used as a pick ticket or invoice. You can also login to the MANAGER and view and download orders from the ORDERS section on the Y!Secure Server. Powerful STATISTICS tools show sources of revenue & traffic from search engines and your other sources of traffic. Track where sales are coming from with REFERENCES to see what keywords your customers use to find you Manage Email lists of customers for inexpensive and effective marketing Track links through simple Affiliate Program Manager Configure accepted payment methods & shipping methods and rates Customize your order form and site settings See individual customer paths through CLICK TRAILS Submit pages to most popular search engines Manage domain name and email settings | | Credit Cards Real Time Authorization Use First Data Gateway with your Merchant Account Get a Merchant Account with Yahoo's credit card processor Manual Credit Card Authorization: Process credit cards manually through your existing merchant account |
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