Michael Roebuck's Blog

In an effort to help merchants out in this current economy, Yahoo has started a campaign to push the Cross Sell feature and has drafted a letter for us developers to help get the word out. The cross sell feature is basically a way for you to ask the customer; "Do you want fries with that?" Many of my clients currently use it successfully and I would agree with Yahoo that if you aren't using it now, you really should give it a try. Below is some information as provided by Yahoo. Please review and give us a call if you have any questions.

In this tough economy, we are all learning how to do more with less. We want to help you get more sales from the customers who are already visiting your site. As an authorized Yahoo! Small Business developer partner, we are working with Yahoo! to help you easily and inexpensively increase conversions and order volume simply by making the most of features already included within your Merchant Solutions or Store account. As such, we'd like to call attention to Yahoo!'s Cross-Sell features, including Auto-Suggest and Product Page Cross-Sell.

Auto-Suggest is based on Yahoo! Behavioral Targeting technology, utilizing past purchase combinations and navigation history to automatically suggest items to your shoppers. Merchants using this feature have reported up to a 30% increase in average order values (AOV). In addition, 80% of revenue generated by cross-sell rules is generated by the Auto-Suggest feature, while only 20% is generated by manually created cross-sell rules. In short, the data proves that if you are only using manual cross-sell rules, you are likely leaving money on the table.

Product Page Cross-Sell is also included as a new feature, allowing cross-sell merchandising on both product pages and within the shopping cart. These options can use auto-suggestions, manually created rules or any combination thereof.

Cross-Sell placement is customizable through CSS and can be self-installed or installed in partnership with us. Please give us a call to discuss options for your company. With a 30% higher average order value, a custom installation of product page cross-sell in your templates will pay for itself in little time.

For more information on this feature, check out the Yahoo! Store blog posts on the topic:

Yahoo! Blog: Would You Like Cross-sell With That? Yahoo! Improves Cross-sell Feature

Yahoo! Blog: Optimal Cross Selling For The Holidays

Or, of course, you can always contact All Web Promotion.

Labels: cross-sell, yahoo

Wow! It's been a month since I've uploaded a post. Where does the time go? It's definitely been a busy month and I have several ideas for posts, but time escapes me. My wife and I are still looking for a house and that seems to be taking up most evenings. We really don't want to build, but because she runs a home business, most new subdivisions restrict what she can do. Anyway, that's a blog post in itself and should be titled something about why I don't drink because buying a house will certainly make you start!

Anyway, A couple new features at Yahoo! that you need to know about. The new Cross Sell feature and the Keyword Finder feature. Both are wonderful tools that will save you time and energy.

The Cross Sell Feature allows you to cross sell items on both your shopping cart page and the actual item pages. This is beautiful! If you are already using cross sell, you know the headache of having to create the cross sell list based upon item codes. Unfortunately, that headache is still there, but they have introduced a new feature that will automatically make suggestions based upon past customers' purchase and navigation history data to suggest products that are most likely to convert to sales. This is nice!

If you are not already using Cross Sell, please give it a try. All of my stores using it have shown sales based on this feature. In short, it works! And now that it can be automatic, it's easy! More information can be found on the Yahoo! Cross Sell help page.

The other new tool is the Keyword Finder. This is a great tool that will highlight specific keywords that have helped lead shoppers to your on-line store and make a purchase. The system automatically identifies the most relevant and effective keywords by using data from activity on your store, as well as traffic driven by search marketing campaigns on Yahoo and other search engines. You can then download the list of keywords to use in your existing campaigns or start new ones.

You might already use a keyword research tool that suggests keywords based upon Search Engine use. The Yahoo! Keyword Finder suggests keywords based upon your own sites history; thereby suggesting keywords that are generating sales. Be careful though, it only suggests keywords where people have bought something. You still need to be aware of industry keywords because you might be missing sales if you aren't aware of specific industry terms. More information can be found on the Yahoo! Keyword Finder help page.

The next time you have a few minutes to play around, I highly suggest looking at these two new features. Especially with Christmas right around the corner, you may have the opportunity to increase sales a bit. That would be nice!

Labels: cross-sell, keyword, yahoo