| The best hardware for running a business is useless without the right software. Having the right software for the right job will not only help you save time but also streamline your business tasks. There are many different computer programs on the market today that can meet your software requirements, but we recommend you stick with the Microsoft suite of software programs called Microsoft Office (www.microsoft.com). Microsoft Office comes with a suite of applications that will be a great help to your online business. The standard edition includes Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Excel. The Professional Edition comes with everything from the standard edition plus Access and Publisher. Let's look at them one at time and see why they are good tools for building and maintaining a Yahoo! store. MS Word Word is the best selling word processing software program used to create text documents. It's a great program for producing customer invoices and letters. MS PowerPoint Planning on making a business presentation? PowerPoint is a professional presentation software program that will also allow you to add video and audio, and even collaborate online. You can also make your PowerPoint presentation available on your store website. MS Outlook Outlook is an email client that also manages your important contacts, schedules, tasks, and notes. You can also have an email confirmation of every order sent immediately to this email client. MS Excel Excel is a spreadsheet application that will allow you to create custom formulas for instant calculations. You can export your orders from your Yahoo! store into Excel for easy viewing and processing. You can also perform a database upload to add new products or update product info with a .csv file using Excel. MS Access Want to create your own database and custom reports for your business? Access is a relational database application that you can use to export your customer orders and import them into Access. You can also create advanced reports to see other trends and statistics of your business. MS Publisher Man does not live by online alone. You may want to create flyers to advertise sales or make an announcement. So, why not design a professional-looking flyer? Publisher will allow you to create professional-looking promotional material and print it using any regular printer. You can even make your publications available to customers who visit your online store.
Besides the integrated suite of software products of Microsoft Office, there are other types of software tools you may need to build your Yahoo! store. Image Editor If you are planning on taking digital pictures, scanning photos, or creating artwork of your product, an imageediting program is a must. An imageediting program will allow you to resize, crop, and touch up your photos. You might want to enhance your images because your customers are basing some of their purchasing decision on the quality and clarity of your product photos. Some printers and scanners also come bundled with imageediting software. If you are planning on purchasing a printer or scanner, you may want to look into this before spending extra money on imageediting software. If your printer or scanner did not include imageediting software, here are some recommended imageediting programs. The following recommended software can be downloaded via the company website and used on a trial basis free of charge for a limited time period. After the trial period, you can purchase a license and continue using the software. Adobe Photoshop Elements Adobe Photoshop Elements (www.adobe.com) is the light version of Adobe Photoshop. Adobe introduced Elements for those who do not need all the tools of the full version of Photoshop and don't want to spend the extra money. Photoshop Elements is still a powerful photoediting tool and will mostly likely satisfy all your editing needs. You can download Photoshop Elements for $89.99. Macromedia Fireworks Fireworks (www.macromedia.com) is Macromedia's premier photoediting program. If you're planning on using other Macromedia products, you might want to consider Fireworks for seamless integration between programs. Corel Paint Shop Pro CorelDraw Paint Shop Pro (www.corel.com) is another great imageediting program. It starts at $69.00 and can be downloaded off Corel's website. The Gimp GNU Image Manipulation Program (www.gimp.org) is a freely distributed software for photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring. Although not as popular as the other three, it's free!
The four programs mentioned above can be downloaded for a free trial. So pick a couple that work for you and try them out before you buy. Web Browser A web browser is a software application that lets users locate and display HTML web pages. If you don't already have a web browser installed, you can download any of these browsers via the links below. Microsoft Internet Explorer is by far the most popular web browser, followed by Safari (Macintosh), then Firefox. Internet Explorer Internet Explorer is Microsoft's own web browser, which comes bundled with all Microsoft operating systems. If you are running Microsoft Windows, you already have this browser installed on your computer. Safari Safari is a Macintoshspecific web browser that's bundled with all new Macintosh computers. Safari can download web pages faster than other leading web browsers. Mac OS X is required for all Safari installations. Firefox Firefox (firefox.com) made its debut in 2004 with more than 1 million downloads in the first four days. Firefox is continually gaining in popularity as an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, with advanced features such as an automatic popup blocker and live bookmarks that will allow you to view news headlines in the bookmark toolbar. Netscape Navigator Once the predominant and main rival of Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator (netscape.com) has lost market share, with less than 1% of users using the browser today.
Tip: Using Multiple Browsers It's also a great idea to download multiple browsers to test how your site looks and interacts in different browsers. This will guarantee that your customers have a similar web experience using their preferred web browser. With Store Editor, you can use any standard web browser to create your store. Since it's all webbased, you can even access orders, site statistics, and customer data while you're away. This can be done on any computer with an Internet connection anywhere in the world. |