| So which package is right for you? Choosing a merchant solution package will depend on your business process needs, cost of web hosting, and the features you would like to utilize. The Yahoo! Merchant Solutions packages offer a number of features that will make your online storefront and its management easy and efficient, and include the flowing features: Order Processing Yahoo! Merchant Solutions comes with a suite of tools to help you with order processing, such as a central management system that will allow you to view, approve, or deny orders; accept multiple forms of payment; receive orders via email or fax; send status updates; automatically calculate taxes during the checkout process; and customize risk tools to prevent fraud. Shipping Tools Yahoo! Merchant Solutions gives you the ability to set up multiple shipping options such as express, priority, ground, and/or air. Merchant Solutions also is integrated with UPS to generate tracking and shipping labels. Product Category and Inventory Management Catalog Manager allows you to view, sort, edit, and organize your product information. You can also receive alerts when your product availability falls under a predetermined level. Merchandising Marketing tools such as gift certificates, a coupon manager, and a crossselling engine are some of the options that comes with the Merchant Solutions Standard and Professional packages. Statistics Keep track of what's hot and what's not. Generate easytoread reports to see how well your products are selling. Track visitor rates to see how your marketing campaigns are doing or view what keywords customers used to find your website on major search engines. Exclusive Discounts and Marketing Services As a merchant, you have access to discounts to list your product on popular shopping websites such as Yahoo! Shopping, www.shopping.com, and www.bizrate.com. Also available are thirdparty tools to help promote your business such as email marketing solutions, affiliate programs, and search engine submission. Personalized Domain Name As a Merchant Solutions customer, you can register your own domain name (www.yourdomain.com) free of charge as long as your account is active.
Customer Support Help is just a phone call away. Customer support is available tollfree 24 hours, 7 days a week. Website Management Included in your package is 10 Gigabytes of data storage. Additional disk space is also available at an additional charge. Website Design Store Editor comes with easytouse templates to build your store. Merchant Solutions also supports other HTML building tools such as Dreamweaver, Frontpage, and Yahoo! SiteBuilder. Email Up to 100 email accounts are included with every package. Get up to 2GB of storage per email account. Merchant Solutions supports POP and SMTP access so you can use popular email software tools such as Microsoft Outlook. Tired of getting email spam? SpamGuard Plus junk email protection helps prevent those unwanted emails. Site Security Every customer order is protected with SSL security for all transactions, order processing, and shopping cart pages to prevent fraud. Merchant Solutions also has a builtin backup system just in case you need to restore your files.
Table 8.1 compares all three merchant solution packages; their prices range from $39.95 to $299.95 per month. Table 8.1. ComparisonChartPackage | Starter | Standard | Professional |
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Monthly Hosting fee | $39.95 | $99.95 | $299.95 | Onetime setup fee | $50 | $50 | $50 | Transaction fee | 1.5% | 1% | 0.75% | Best plan for merchants expecting sales of | $0$11,999/mo. | $12,000$79,999/mo. | More than $80,000/mo. | Ordering Processing | Accept credit card payments online (PayPal account or merchant account required[*]) |
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| Configurable Risk Tools to verify |
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| Shopping cart and secure checkout process |
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| Set up tax tables for automatic calculation in checkout |
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| Central order management system (view, approve, and print orders) |
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| Automated order confirmations and status update emails |
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| Receive orders via fax or email | Email only |
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| Post order data in real-time to external or applications | |
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| Shipping Tools | Set up shipping methods and rate calculation rules |
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| Automated UPS shipment processing, tracking, and shipping label generation |
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| Export orders to UPS Worldship |
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| Product Catalog and Inventory Management | Catalog Manager (view, sort, edit, and organize product information) |
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| Upload and download product information into Catalog Manager so it can be managed offline |
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| Track inventory by option (color, size, and so on) |
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| Receive inventory alerts if quantity drops below predetermined levels |
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| Merchandising | Gift certificates | |
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| Cross-sell engine | |
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| Coupon Manager | |
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| Trackable links for affiliate and other revenue sharing programs |
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| | Statistics | Configurable sales reports and graphs (items sold, orders, revenue, and so on) |
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| Page view and referring site statistics |
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| Repeat orders by customers |
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| Click trails (shows pathways customers take through your site when they purchase) | |
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| Frequent search topics for your site | |
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| Exclusive Discounts on Marketing Services | Listings in shopping destinations (Yahoo! Shopping, Shopping.com, BizRate) |
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| Search engine keyword ads (Yahoo! Sponsored optimization (Search, Google AdWords) |
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| Search engine submissions and Submitnet) |
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| Ad performance tracking (KeyWordMax) |
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| Email marketing solution (Got) |
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| Direct marketing lists (infoUSA) |
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| Affiliate programs (Commission Junction) |
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| Personalized Domain Name | Domain name registration |
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| Domain locking to help prevent unauthorized transfers |
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| Yahoo! Private Domain Registration to help protect your privacy[**] | + $0.75/mo. | + $0.75/mo. | + $0.75/mo. | Website subdomains | 500 | 500 | 500 | Customer Support | 24-hour tollfree phone support |
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| Priority email and online help |
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| Website Management | Disk space for storing files | 10 GB | 10 GB | 10 GB | Data transfer (bandwidth)/month | 200 GB | 200 GB | 200 GB | Multiuser FTP for putting files on server |
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| Website Design | Easy-to-use wizard and templates to build a store fast |
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| Yahoo! SiteBuilder software (includes 380+customizable website templates and robust tools) |
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| Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Extension for Dreamweaver |
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| Support for Microsoft FrontPage[***] |
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| Perl, PHP, and MySQL for building interactive sites[****] |
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| Email | Yahoo! Business Mail accounts | 100 | 100 | 100 | Email storage (per account) | 2GB | 2GB | 2GB | POP and SMTP email access |
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| SpamGuard Plus junk email protection |
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| Norton AntiVirus screening and cleaning |
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| Site Security | Passwordprotected user accounts | 100 | 100 | 100 | Regular website backups and restores |
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| SSL security for all transactions, order processing, and shopping cart pages |
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| Assign access privileges to Store Manager tools |
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[**] Private domain registration is available for an additional $.07 per month. [***] Microsoft FrontPage is a thirdparty software tool that must be purchased separately. [****] Does not work with the Product Catalog and Store Tags. As you can see from the chart, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions has plenty of features to build, manage, and market your site. For new features and an updated comparison chart, please visit http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/merchant/compare.php. Tip: The merchandising marketing features such as crosssell engine, coupon manager, and gift certificates that are included with the Standard package make it worthwhile to spend the extra money. With those marketing features, you can up sell and create repeat customers. As we mentioned previously, you can easily upgrade your merchant solution package as your business grows. If you are just starting out and don't want to spend the extra money, you can signup for the Starter package and upgrade later. Once you're ready to take full advantage of all the other features the Standard and Professional packages have to offer, just log in to your store manager, click on the Change or Cancel Plan link, and then click on the Upgrade link under the Merchant Solutions package you would like to upgrade to (see Figure 8.1). Yahoo! Merchant Solutions will automatically adjust your monthly invoice. Figure 8.1. Setup fees are waived when you upgrade to a more powerful Merchant Solutions package.
Building Your StoreStore Editor Versus Web Hosting Okay. You chose a merchant package that meets your business needs. Now you have to build your online store. Yahoo! Merchant Solutions has two different tools for hosting and building your online store. They are Store Editor and Web Hosting. Which options you should choose will depend on your needs and technical capabilities. Table 8.2 will show important differences between each tool. Table 8.2. Differences Between Store Editor and Web Hosting| | Store Editor | Web Hosting |
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Creating new web pages | You create your web pages in the Store Editor using any standard web browser. | You create your web pages using an HTML software tool such as MacromediaDreamweaver.[*] | Publishing your website | Just click the Publish button on the toolbar in Store Editor. | Upload your web pages via an FTP client or Yahoo! File Manager to your hosting account. | URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or web address of your website | Your web pages are published to the sub-domain "store"; for example, store.yourdomain.com. | Your web pages are published to the "www."subdomain; for example, www.yourdomain.com. | Ease of development | If you are new to building a web page, do not know HTML, and want to create a store as quickly as possible, the Store Editor may be the right choice. To create products, all you need to do is fill out the forms and upload your images by using a browser. The Store Editor will create the product pages for you. | If you know HTML and want to use a program such as Dreamweaver and want to customize your store, building your store in Web Hosting may be right for you. Using Web Hosting will require you to import the Catalog Manager data or manually insert Store Tags and Store Modules. | Ease of design customization | It is less easy to customize your store layout and look using Store Editor. Although there are many options to customize your layout using variables, you may find it difficult to customize the store to your exact specifications. | If you are experienced with HTML and want to have more control over the layout and look of the store, this might be the right choice for you. If you are familiar with using tools such as Dreamweaver, this may be more intuitive. Web Hosting also allows you to use features such as PHP/MySQL and Perl. | Your HTML building software tool experience | If you don't have experience coding HTML or any HTML building software, using Store Editor with get your site up and running in a short amount of time using just your web browser. Store Editor comes with a preset look along with navigation buttons on the left side. | If you are experience and comfortable using HTML building software, you may prefer using Web Hosting. Web Hosting may take more work but will give you the flexibility of customization to your store. |
[*] For more information on Dreamweaver go to www.macromedia.com. |