Online Store Hosting Services
by Vene T. Yates

To get to the Yahoo Store from the home page, Click on the more ... text to be linked to the following: http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/family/more.html which lists many yahoo options. Under the Business Tools section you will find a link to "Store - Create a custom storefront for your online business". Be sure and check out the other business options as well as the Personal Publishing section.

Cost
You pay $49.95/month for hosting, $0.10 per item per month, 0.5% transaction fee on all transactions, and 3.5% revenue share on transactions that originate on the Yahoo! Network. There is no startup fee and you can cancel whenever you want.

Ways to receive orders

1. Most merchants view orders in their web browser: just go to the Yahoo! Store home page and log in to your Store Manager. Once you've entered your password, you'll be able to view orders over a secure connection.

2. You can retrieve orders as database files in a choice of common formats. This lets merchants with many products and a large volume of orders integrate web orders into their existing order stream.

3. You can have orders sent to you by fax.

4. If you have your own secure server, you can have orders posted to you in real time.

Tracking Tools
An incredible number of statistics are available and listed at http://store.yahoo.com/studyourstat.html
Clear explanations of how you can use these stats to evaluate the success of your pages is provided and suggestions for adjustments to these tools. This info is worth a read even if you are not setting up a store. Be sure and check this out.

Creating and Maintaining the Site
Clear step-by-step instructions on how to do everything is well laid out beginning with the Reference Manual found at http://store.yahoo.com/refman.html

Many options and suggestions are provided for the front page of the site and even customization of navigation buttons. By default, the navigation is placed on the left side. If buttons are desired on the top, then you lose the ability to have a different set of buttons on the front page. Some potential issues that may occur are offered as well as solutions. Very well thought out instructions. What impressed me most was that yahoo offers three levels of design assistance from Simple to Regular to Advanced so that a person with web design skills may use HTML to get just the look they desire on the site.

 

 

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