Yahoo! Review

Housing up to 50,000 of your products for under $20/month, Yahoo! Small Business is a great way to start up your eCommerce business without crippling your bottom line. Yahoo! Small Business connects you with one of the most recognizable Internet brands in the world, allowing you to take advantage of decades of online experience when you sign up. But Yahoo! Small Business also meets these high expectations by offering a comprehensive eCommerce solution as easy to use as it is powerful. In addition to raw power, Yahoo! Small Business also provides tremendous flexibility in terms of design, templates, payment processing and marketing options. No matter what you’re looking for, it seems Yahoo! Small Business is one of the most impressive eCommerce options around today.

Ease of Use

Yahoo! Small Business implements wizard-based design features to walk you through the creation of your online store, so you don’t get bogged down with any complicated processes before you even get started. You can easily incorporate third-party applications if you prefer, but Yahoo! Small Business is designed to help even novice users get established as quickly and easily as possible. It even provides a network of developers that can help you create a custom online store tailored to your needs.

Yahoo! Home Page

Themes and Templates

Yahoo! Small Business provides the design tools to bring your store to life, including stunning templates to suit all types of stores, services and product lines. A simple editing tool even allows you to take an existing template and modify it to your liking. It’s this kind of flexibility that makes Yahoo! Small Business such a popular choice among all sorts of eCommerce customers. If you don’t like certain aspects of a design, you have the flexibility to make the desired changes through a built-in editing tool. Yahoo! Small Business also lets you use third-party HTML editing tools, in case you have some experience in website creation and would rather do it on your own.

Security

Yahoo! Small Business has been around long enough to understand the importance of data security. Providing numerous safeguards to ensure the security of stored data and financial information, Yahoo! Small Business can help you create a sense of safety for your customers. Yahoo! Small Business uses SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption during the transmission of payment information, which basically cloaks your users’ sensitive information. As another optional safeguard, the company offers a Security Key to restrict access to associated financial information, such as Yahoo! Wallet, Yahoo! Bill Pay and Yahoo! Merchant Solutions.

Marketing

Yahoo! Small Business has provided several powerful marketing tools for countless eCommerce customers. Chief among those is SEO (search engine optimization), which helps improve search results for your store and can bring more potential customers to your site. Choose from several popular promotional tools, like 20% discounts off of minimum bid prices, social media sharing on Facebook and Twitter, email campaigns and other powerful merchandising techniques that are focused on increasing your conversions and maximizing your sales revenue.

Customer Support

Yahoo! Small Business provides 24-hour phone and email support for its eCommerce customers, which provides full access to experts that can build and fine-tune online stores. If you’re simply searching for tips, tricks and other information, start with the Yahoo! Merchant Services Help page. For articles on every eCommerce topic from payment processing to product shipping, this knowledge base can provide most of the answers you need. You can also choose to submit a help request, and a Yahoo! Small Business’ expert will answer you as quickly as possible.

Other Features

  • Use the Order Management tool to track and handle orders, returns, exchanges and refunds from one convenient location.
  • Go with Yahoo! web hosting and receive unlimited disk space and data transfer.
  • Track your inventory and add up to 50,000 products to your store via the Wizard, or from your spreadsheet or database.

Pricing

Starter - $19.98/month (or $10.19/month for 1 year) for 50,000 products, 1.5% transaction fee, unlimited disk space and 1,000 email addresses.

Standard - $49.98/month (or $25.49/month for 1 year) for 50,000 products, 1.0% transaction fee, unlimited disk space,1,000 email addresses, upsell and cross-sell capabilities, gift certificates, real-time integration with external inventory-management systems and UPS WorldShip integration .

Professional - $299.99/month (or $254.95/month for 1 year) for 50,000 products, .75% transaction fee, unlimited disk space,1,000 email addresses, upsell and cross-sell capabilities, gift certificates, real-time integration with external inventory-management systems and UPS WorldShip integration.

Conclusion

Yahoo! Small Business is an eCommerce solution for business owners of all skill and revenue levels. Whether you have no website experience or years of HTML and design under your belt, you can quickly and easily step through the construction, implementation and management of your online store. With practical solutions for inventory, tracking and merchandising tasks, Yahoo! Small Business covers all your bases in one easy-to-use solution that will get your products online. Best of all, Yahoo! Small Business could offer the kind of worldwide exposure that your business needs to succeed.