Michael Roebuck's Blog

Yahoo has recently launched a new Access Manager. Now you have more options for the types of access you grant to others, so you can make sure your developers, order processors, and anyone else working on your store have only the access you want. With the new administrator role, for example, you can provide a user with access to both your Store Control Panel and your Web Hosting Control Panel. Other new roles are more focused to specific sections of your account. A store editor can work only with your site building tools, but won't see your site statistics, while a order processor can only see orders but can't modify store pages or catalog.

More information can be found here: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/access/access-03.html

I have taken most of the different access levels and placed them on a spreadsheet for easier referencing. Please let me know if you want a copy of the spreadsheet.

This is a nice new feature and I encourage you all to reset your users to the best access levels. Certain people don't need access to store statistics, customer credit card data, etc.

If you have any questions or need help understanding this new feature, please let me know.

Labels: access, manager, yahoo

On July 29, 2009, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry.

After reading several posts and news articles full of opinions and forecasts, I decided to post a few facts that were mentioned on one site that was written in plain English meant something to me:

• Microsoft's Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites.
• Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft's AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter's automated auction process.
• The companies are hopeful that closing can occur in early 2010.
  

The companies have established a website at http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com to provide consumers, advertisers and publishers with additional information about the benefits of the agreement.

The transaction will be subject to regulatory review. (Insert my opinion here: Didn't Google try to get in bed with Yahoo and then back out after regulators said it would be a monopoly or something like that? I'm sure Google will try to block this somehow, won't they?)

Continuing with my opinion... Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz states, "With Microsoft powering Yahoo! Search, we'll be able to focus on the things we do best -- being the center of people's lives online with properties like our homepage, mail, finance, news, sports, entertainment, mobile, etc."

Where does Business fall in there? Is Yahoo! Small Business really for sale? Could Rob Snell, Greg Sterling, New York Times and Reuters, to name a few, all be right?

Labels: deal, microsoft, search, yahoo

If you receive copies of your Yahoo orders via fax, then you know that the fax feature has been "temporarily" disabled. Yahoo has posted an Outlook workaround for those of you who use Outlook as an email client. If you haven't read it, please go here: Yahoo Email Orders Help Article.

For those of you that don't use Outlook, or are Merchant Starters and don't have the order fax ability, here is your solution: Automatic Print Email

Here's how it works in a nutshell:

1. Set up a separate email address for orders only. (This is totally optional. But if you receive hundreds of orders daily, or don't want anyone accessing your email, it may be convenient.)
2. Set your Yahoo Manager to email your orders immediately and as an Adobe PDF attachment.
   
3. Load Automatic Print Email on a computer that will remain on. Set it up to read your email and set a filter to only print the order attachment. (My bigger accounts are set to check every 2 minutes.)
4. Watch the orders print automatically.

Once set up correctly, the Automatic Print Email software will log into your email account at pre-determined intervals set by you. It will scan your emails and print those that trigger the filters you set, such as orders. Instead of checking the fax for new orders, you simply check your printer.

Automatic Print Email comes with a fully functional 30 day trial period so you aren't out any cash while you check it out. If you do like it, the cost is only $49.90 so it's not very expensive either.

NOTE: The orders you print out will look just like the downloaded orders EXCEPT they will NOT have credit card data. Remember, Yahoo will NOT email credit card data on orders because it isn't secure. If you want credit card data, use the Yahoo solution as previously listed here: Yahoo Email Orders Help Article.

Here's how to set it up:

1. Determine an email address to send orders and Download and run the Automatic Print Email program. The rest of the rules pertain to the software program.
   
2. Set up a POP 3 Email account. If using a Yahoo Business Email account, remember to check the secure connection box and change the Server Port Number to 995.
   
   
   
3. When you hit Next, Be sure to select "Print Only Attachments"
   
   
   
   
4. Select "Advanced Options" and be sure to select "Yes" to print all pages of the documents.
   
   


5. Click "OK" to finish setting up the email account.

You are almost done now. You have set up the email address to check, now you just need to set up the filter to tell the software what emails to print.

1. Click on the "Filters List" button and "Create New Filter."
2. When setting up rules, because you only want to print orders, it's easier to set a rule stating what NOT to print. Therefore, I set my rule to state that if the subject doesn't contain "Yahoo! Orders as PDF" then don't print. Note that this screen gives you a check box providing the ability to delete mail from your mailbox. This is nice if you get lots of orders.
   
   
   
   
3. Next, select "More Actions." Here, you only want to print the attachment.
   
   
   
   
4. Click OK. You are basically done now. One last item to do is tell the software how often to check for email. To do this, click, "File" - "Options" - "Visual Appearance and Usage"
5. Under the left nav bar of "Visual Appearance and Usage" you'll see where you can select minutes and seconds to check your email.
6. Finally, after everything is set, you will see a little countdown timer on the bottom left corner of the main screen. This will tell you when it will check your email again. Other columns are pretty self explanatory.
   
   

That's it! I hope this helps you with receiving your orders. If you have any questions or need any help, please be sure to contact me.

Labels: checkout, fax, yahoo

Customize buyer-facing order number prefixes

By default, order numbers displayed to your store customers are prefixed with your store ID. For example, if a customer's order number is 792, and your store ID is yhst-12345678911011, the order number is displayed to the customer as yhst-12345678911011-792 on order confirmation and order status pages in checkout, in order and shipment confirmation emails, and on printed order materials (order invoice and packing slip).

Now, you can customize what comes before the order number, using the new "Order Number Prefix" field in the Shipment and Order Status section of Store Manager. If your store name is "Widget World" and you want to replace the store ID in the order number with "widget-world," you can now go right ahead. Your customized order number prefix will be shown in the buyer-facing locations noted above. (Merchants should note that for printed order materials, the custom order number prefix will appear on materials printed to PDF, but not on materials printed to HTML.)

Replace your store ID in order numbers using the "Order Number Prefix" field.

Custom order number prefix displayed in checkout.

Specify a sender name for order and shipment status emails

Order and shipment status emails use a default sender name in the "From" field, pulled from the "Title" variable in your Store Manager. Should you wish to customize the "From" field, you may do so using the "Catalog Name for Confirmation/Update Emails" field in the Shipment and Order Status section of Store Manager. So if your "Title" variable was "All Paws Up - Pet Supplies for the Pampered Puppy," and you wanted your email sender name to simply be "All Paws Up," you can change this using the "Catalog Name for Confirmation/Update Emails" field.

Customize the sender name used for order and shipment confirmation emails using the "Catalog Name for Confirmation/Update Emails" field.

If you haven't yet enabled order and shipment status emails and want to learn more about setting these up, please see the "Configuring shipping and order confirmation emails" help page.

Hope this helps customize your Yahoo! Store a little bit more! As always, contact us with any questions or if you need help implementing these updates.

Labels: confirmation, email, shipment, status, yahoo

Last month, Yahoo! upgraded the Coupon Code ability by releasing new features that give you greater flexibility when extending coupon offers to your customers.

You are now able to:

• Create single use coupon codes
• Easily exclude products from offers
• Sort and filter your coupon data to provide greater insight into the performance of your promotions

From the feedback I've received, I don't think many of you fully understand what these changes mean to you. In today's tough economy, people are still shopping, but now they use coupons. Report after report all state the increase in coupon usage:

According to various ComScore reports:

• 11/06/08: "The number of users visiting these coupon sites, with an annual salary of $100,000 or more, increased by 37 percent in the third quarter, compared with the same time last year."
• 1/09: "According to a January 2009 ComScore survey, over 50% of consumers are using coupons more often as a way to cut back on their shopping expenses."
• 2/20/09: "Searches on the term "coupon" have more than tripled, and more than half (53%) of the online population is using coupons more often."

And this is what I found in 10 minutes of searching. I barely scratched the surface of reports published.

So, What's the big deal with the new changes? Let's discuss 2 of the big changes:

1) Creating single use coupon codes. A single use coupon can only be used once. Once it has been used, it will no longer work. Single use coupon codes are great when you don't want your coupon code published on everyone's website and emailed to everyone's friends. I understand that most of your coupon codes you may want to go viral. But here are a few options you may not have thought about:

1. You screw up on an order and want to give the customer a large apology with an expiration date.
2. You work a deal with a specific supplier who will reimburse you the money given on a discount. You can email all your customers giving each one a unique coupon code for $X off there next "brand y" product. (Yes, All Web can merge coupon codes into an email)
3. Refer a friend and either the referrer or both receive a coupon.
4. Sign up for your newsletter and receive a coupon.
   
5. You can print out these coupons and include with each order as a re-order incentive.

Use your imagination! Change it around a bit. Coupons are so easy to create and use that you can test different strategies to determine what works best for you. Single use coupons can be created in blocks of up to 50,000 coupons per code series.

tip: You no longer have to begin each coupon with a letter. You can now use numbers or letters in the beginning of the coupon code!

2) Easily exclude products from offers. Remember the old way? You had to list the item codes of items valid for that code. Meaning, if you created a coupon but didn't want a few items included, you had to list every item on the site except those few that were excluded. What a pain that was! Now, you can simply add the few items not included and set the code to either "include selected items" or "exclude selected items."

Being able to exclude items should allow you to be more creative as well. Let's face it, it was a royal pain to get item codes, especially when you are dealing with options! I would try to avoid coupons at all costs because of that. Now, we can test coupons that are brand specific very easily. Also, Yahoo added a handy little chart that shows the website in outline form. I can simply select a section and all items within that section are automatically selected.

In Summary....

The coupon code feature has been improved to a much easier user interface. If you haven't used coupon codes in a while, I highly suggest you at least take a look at them again. We know that people are looking for coupons and this is one more tool you may be able to use to capture that initial or repeat order with a lower cost per acquisition than Pay Per Click or some other marketing methods.

Give me a call and we can see how coupon codes may be useful for your company!


After reading this article, be sure to read my previous initial blog post announcing and explaining some more details regarding the new Coupon Features. The article can be found here: New Coupon Code Features - 3/5/09.

Labels: coupon, features, yahoo

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

Yahoo! released new features with there coupon codes that give you greater flexibility when extending coupon offers to your customers.

You will now be able to:

• Create single use coupon codes
  
• Easily exclude products from offers
  
• Sort and filter your coupon data to provide greater insight into the performance of your promotions

You will be able to create two types of coupons in Coupon Manager: standard (the coupons you've always had), and new single-use coupons, which are created in series. Single-use coupons can be redeemed one time only, giving you the freedom to create offers tailored for specific customers without the worry of coupons being shared.

The following are some promotional ideas for you to consider:

• Include a printed single-use coupon offer in outgoing shipments
  
• Have multiple stores? Cross-Sell coupon offers in outgoing shipments
  
• Offer single-use coupons via Live Chat agents where abandonment may be likely
  
• Offer single-use coupons as incentives to increase customer satisfaction
• Merge single-use coupon codes into email marketing campaigns

All Web Promotion already has the email capabilities to merge these single use coupon codes, one per email. Contact us for details!

Whether you're creating a single-use or standard coupon, you can now choose to exclude specific store items from your offer. Previously, you could choose which individual items to include in a coupon offer, or to include all store items. Being able to exclude items makes coupon creation a faster and easier process. This can be especially helpful if you carry a large number of products and wish to exclude only one or a few from a special promotion.

Enhancements to Coupon Manager give you new ways to sort and filter your coupon data. Coupons can now be sorted by number of orders, revenue, coupon code, type, expiration date, and conversion rate. New coupon filters also allow you to apply coupon status and time-period filters, and to download filtered coupon lists. You can even sort by offer conversion rate to quickly identify top performing offers and further build on that success.

No changes are required on your part to use these great new Coupon Manager features. Simply click the "Coupon Manager" link in the "Promote" section of Store Manager to get started.

Labels: coupon, features, yahoo

Fresh off the Yahoo! Store Blog: The official announcement of Yahoo! Web Analytics.

As Paul writes on the Official Yahoo blog.... "...Any merchant that has tried to set up full analytics on their store knows there are challenges to getting full tracking from entry page to order confirmation. Today, I am happy to announce that we have completed the first phase of our product integration with IndexTools to solve that problem. Announcing Yahoo! Web Analytics for Yahoo! Merchant Solutions. Now merchants can enable analytics at the click of a button to capture full referral data, internal search keywords, step-by-step checkout conversion rates and filter and segment all of this to find meaningful actionable insights that translate into more revenue for their stores..."

Full post can be read here:
Introducing Yahoo! Web Analytics

IndexTools is now Yahoo! Web Analytics

Brandi and I had the opportunity to travel to Yahoo! a couple weeks ago for training on this new program. It wasn't new to us as we have been using a white label version of IndexTools for several of our clients for several years now. I was very excited to hear everyone could have the opportunity to use it.

If you have any questions regarding IndexTools or need help setting up, please be sure to let us know.

Labels: analytics, indextools, yahoo

Congratulations to Yahoo for receiving the 2008 Search Engine Strategies Award for the Search Engine with Most Relevant Search Results.

I knew that Merchant Solutions was the best hosting platform, now we know you have the most relevant search results as well.

Congratulations!!

More info on the: Search Engine Strategies Awards - 2008

Labels: awards, search, ses, yahoo

I was eating lunch at the Hotel here in San Jose and decided to check email from my phone. I received a blog post that really caught my eye. Scott Smigler of Exclusive Concepts had written a great article on why Yahoo Store was the best e-commerce platform.

Scott's company is like mine and they are also a Yahoo Partner. Anyway, I highly recommend you go and read his article titled: Yahoo Store | The Best E commerce Platform for SEO.

I don't want to copy any of his text because it's a new post and I want to be sure Google picks his article up first. But in my opinion, it's a good read all but one major flaw.

He specifically states Yahoo Merchant Solutions is a great platform if you plan on or are doing a minimum of $500,000 annual sales. I respectfully disagree. Yahoo Merchant Solutions is an excellent platform for EVERYONE, with no suggestion of minimum annual sales. Where else can you have an easy to design website that includes a secure shopping cart for $39 month? He does mention it's scalable so as your business grows you can access more features but for the new person starting out, it's an excellent vehicle. We too looked at other platforms and seriously considered designing eBay ProStores at one time but no-one, and I mean No-One comes close to what Yahoo Merchant Solutions offers. As Scott mentions, That probably explains why 1 in 8 e-commerce sites are hosted by Yahoo!

So, great story Scott! I enjoyed reading it. And maybe you placed a minimum to ward off the low end design clients. The ones who want a site like Amazon for $300. That's OK. We have a $299 package and can work with them! (No Amazon though. Not even close for $299)

If you are on the fence about if you should use Yahoo Merchant Solutions, Go read Scott's article!

Labels: merchant, solutions, yahoo

In reference to my post yesterday titled, "Hackersafe - McAfee Secure vs. ControlScan" as well as a post by Cresta Pillsbury titled, "What is McAfee thinking?????", and to quote Bob Dylan; "The Times They Are a-Changin'".

Karl Ribas came into my office today asking what yesterday's post was supposed to mean. "It doesn't make sense," he said. After pulling up a website to show him, I see McAfee Secure changed there secure page and removed the link to the shopping sites. I really wish I has taken a screen shot, but I didn't.

It looks like McAfee has removed the big link to the shopping sites but replaced it with a smaller text link under the content. The second large link now reads, "Stay Safe From Online Threats" and links you to there Site Advisor product. Using Cresta's example, below is the screen shot of what her client site now looks like with the text link:



But, Wait.... Below is a screen shot of one of my clients and they don't have the text link:



What's going on McAfee? Are you testing landing pages? Anyway, if you look at the fist screen shot, the text link I pointed out now takes you to a listing of all the McAfee Certified Sites. I admit it doesn't take you directly to the McAfee Secure Shopping portal like yesterday, but it does have a rather large listing of alternative sites for you to browse as well as a really nice link smack dab center of the page that will take you to secure shopping portal.

Below is a screen shot of the landing page you go to if you click on the company link as shown in the first image:



If anything new happens, I'll keep you posted. Maybe McAfee Secure is testing landing pages. Maybe they have read our posts and maybe companies have complained. Whatever the reason, as long as traffic stops being diverted to shopping portals, I would think clients will be satisfied.

Labels: controlscan, cresta, hackersafe, mcafee, pillsbury, secure, security, yahoo

It's been a while since my last post. The summer has been slow with major events but I'm currently watching a new event slowly unfold.

Back in July, 2007 I posted about HackerSafe and compared them to ControlScan. (Should you use Hackersafe? ControlScan?) HackerSafe has now merged with McAfee and has been re branded as "McAfee Secure." I won't go into the price increase of using McAfee Secure but will touch on some changes that I and others are seeing.

Last month I was talking with my good friend Cresta Pillsbury who used to work for Hackersafe. She was made redundant and now works for the E-Commerce Merchants Trade Association. We were discussing the HackerSafe merge as well as the benefits of ControlScan. She has recently posted her own blog post about HackerSafe here: What is McAfee Thinking??

Basically, she exposes McAfee's attempt to steal traffic away from there own merchants. I was dumbfounded when I originally read her post because I was completely oblivious to this trick and I usually look for this type of stunt.

Cresta writes, "Anyone who is currently using the McAfee seal on their site is actually paying McAfee to take their traffic and send it to their competitors. What?!! I know but check out this link. www.gothamcityonline.com, now click on the McAfee seal https://www.mcafeesecure.com/RatingVerify?ref=www.gothamcityonline.com , once you do this their are two different links that will take you to McAfee's secure shopping portal which lists your competitors products. one is the "Attention Shoppers" the other is your company name directly under your URL... So tell me this, how is McAfee helping to increase your conversion if you are spending money for good traffic and they are directing it elsewhere? How is that good business practices?"

I don't need to write any more on this. After you have paid top dollar for Pay Per Click, Email Marketing, SEO, or whatever you do in order to get a customer to your site, McAfee comes along under the guise of "Secure Shopping" and offers them an option to buy from someone else. And you pay McAfee for this service?

Needless to say, I've brought this to the attention of some of my clients and suggest if you use HackerSafe / McAfee Secure, please look into this.

Now, for my rant on third party security......

I'm not too sure I think paying for a third party secure shopping logo is a good idea. I specialize in the design of Yahoo Stores and Yahoo Stores are already secure. I make my own "Secure Shopping" icon and link it directly to Yahoos' Secure Shopping page.

As my previous post on the comparison of HackerSafe and ControlScan stated, we were really testing brand recognition to see if the third party security banner increased conversions or not.

I feel in todays marketplace, PCI compliance mandates security. In order to accept credit cards on your web site you must be PCI compliant. I've filled out several exceptionally long questionnaires sent to me by clients whose banks required this information as well as required the site be scanned by someone other than HackerSafe or ControlScan. (One of the other companies, www.securitymetrics.com has there own "secure" logo as well.) Therefore, I think it's the bank who dictates who ultimately needs to scan the web site. Also, if the web site wasn't secure, they wouldn't be able to accept credit cards.

In closing, while it's a hot topic right now, maybe this will eventually die away as the online credit card industry evolves. Whoever gets to the banks first will win and everyone else will try to hang on and tout increased conversions due to "Brand Loyalty." Wasn't the reason these companies started up in the first place to increase customer perception that the site they are giving financial data to was secure? I admit I'm a fan of the brand McAfee Virus Protection whereas others in my office prefer Norton and some even use AVG. But when I think of McAfee or Norton, I do not think web site security. Nor will I condone McAfee Secure as long as they continue to try to steal my customers by linking to a private shopping portal.

Labels: controlscan, cresta, hackersafe, mcafee, pillsbury, secure, security, yahoo

In an effort to improve security, Yahoo! will be upgrading the pro-forma script (form submission) functionality. If you are using the Yahoo! Form script, this applies to you. Merchants typically use this for newsletter signups, "contact us" forms, or price-quote requests. The pro-forma script security changes will ensure form submissions are properly associated with a store ID and that all email recipients of form submissions are approved. Once the changes are in place, your site will be automatically protected. However, you must take immediate action to use the new approved format for the pro-forma functionality. Otherwise, you may not receive submissions using the old format.

---------------------------------------------
WHAT STEPS DO I NEED TO TAKE?
---------------------------------------------

New URL for form submissions.
The following change will be required within your form tags sent to this script:
<form method="post" action="http://<accountname/yhst1234>.stores.yahoo.net/cgi-bin
/pro-forma">
where "accountname" is your store ID or yhst number. You will need to confirm this revised tag is used for each form sent to this script on your site. After updating the URL for form submissions, you will need to publish your site.

Approved email recipients.
Previously, any names listed within the form as values for owner received the email:
<input type=hidden name="owner" value="me@myname.com">

With this update, merchants must now enter the list of approved form submission recipients in the "Email To" field of the Form Submissions section in the Order Emails page (or the Fax & Email page for Merchant Solutions Standard and Professional merchants). Email addresses should be entered one per line. If you have a form that uses an email address not specified in the "Email To" field, that form submission will not be delivered.

Thank-you URL and Continue-URL under your store domain.
Previously, merchants could specify any URL to take shoppers to for the confirmation page (thankyou-URL) or after leaving the confirmation page (continue-URL):
<input type=hidden name="continue-url" value="http://anydomain.com">

Now merchants will need to specify a page within their store domain to send shoppers to.
<input type=hidden name="continue-url" value="http://merchantdomain.com">

---------------------------------------------
HOW DO I KNOW MY FORMS ARE SET UP CORRECTLY?
---------------------------------------------

If you have active forms on your site but are not receiving form submissions, then you likely have not made all of the required changes.

Confirm your form is submitting to the new URL:
<form method="post" action="http://<accountname>.stores.yahoo.net/cgi-bin/pro-forma">
and that you are using the correct account name.

Ensure that any email address listed in your forms also appears in the "Email To" field on the Order Emails page (Fax & Email for Standard and Professional accounts). You should receive emails of the form submissions to the owner addresses specified in your form, provided you are submitting the form to the new URL and have specified all email addresses.

Ensure your shoppers are being directed to a confirmation page under your domain after submitting the form and after continuing from the confirmation page.

For full details about the newly revised pro-forma functionality, please refer to Yahoo! help documentation.
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/edit/regular
/regular-12.html

Labels: form, script, yahoo

The other day I tried sending an email to a Yahoo! Merchant Professional client and it was promptly returned to me stating the account had been suspended. This concerned me as I maintain the website and wasn't aware of anything. The website was live and working, but why wasn't this particular email address?

I logged into their email control panel and saw a message in red stating the email address had unusual activity and the account was blocked from sending, saving or receiving emails for up to 48 hours.

This was unacceptable as who can be without email for 48 hours? I called Yahoo! and had the engineers take a look around. A little later I received an email stating it was fixed. I responded it wasn't. Time ticked away and eventually I called back and was then advised to delete the over 416,000 unread messages in the account. Basically, my client saved copies of orders, delivery confirmations and apparently everything else that they ever received via email. I deleted the sent mail and few folders containing older confirmations and everything started working again.

Moral of the story.... If you use the webmail feature on Yahoo! Bizmail, delete some email every now and then!

Another Moral..... Deleting 100,000 emails 100 at a time via an Apple iPhone while sitting on the side of the road is not fun.

Labels: bizmail, email, yahoo

Cyber Monday. The biggest on-line shopping day, named because this Monday is the on-line equivalent to Black Friday; the largest shopping day of the year. On-line merchants were expecting a great day and we were prepared to make fast web site updates as merchants needed to make quick tweaks and updates to there sites. Unfortunately, Yahoo Merchant Solutions had a hiccup. Or maybe it was a Heart Attack.

I'm not going to bash Yahoo. Others are going to do enough of that for me. We all know Yahoo had issues. We all had a false sense of security and most of all, we all lost money. How much money? It's unknown as of this post, but the Yahoo Shopping Carts were down for most of the day so you can do the math.

What does this mean for Yahoo? Will clients jump ship? I certainly hope not. While this is certainly a problem and serious money has been lost, it is not a regular occurance. We very rarely have problems with Yahoo and they are always operational. I've been monitoring sites every 5 minutes for years now and can only remember one instance where a client site went down because of Yahoo: (Early April, 2004. PAIX telephone line issues.)

I still believe that if we owned our own servers and this happened, we'd be on the phone with outsourced techs trying to resolve it or the one IT person would be trying to figure it out. It would probably take days to resolve and happen more often. I would guess that Yahoo has more than one IT guy and there are probably numerous people with lots of letters after there names working very hard at fixing this. Yes, Yahoo is going through troubled times and yes, this outage is a serious problem, but as a whole, Yahoo has been very stable. Before you jump on the Yahoo bashing wagon which I'm sure will appear, think about all the good things that happen because of Yahoo. It's still early and we won't know the full effects of this problem for a while yet. That aside, I imagine we'll muddle through. Hopefully Yahoo has learned something and this won't happen again and hopefully we'll be able to create some sort of backup system. But think about this: Where else can you get so much with a scalable solution that benefits the small guy? Yes, there is other competition, but there isn't any other like Yahoo!

Don't know what happened to Yahoo? Here is a Link to Bill Hartzers' Blog with links to various news stories.

Labels: black, christmas, cyber, friday, merchant, monday, solutions, thanksgiving, 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

The question of whether or not you should use the Hackersafe or ControlScan type security logos on your Yahoo! Store has always been a mystery to me that I've been fighting with for some time now. On one hand, they claim to make users feel safe and secure and thus increase sales. On the other hand, Yahoo Stores are already scanned and already secure. Why pay for a service when I can create my own logo and link to a page describing Yahoo! Store Security?

I've recently had the opportunity to meet two wonderful people. Cresta Pillsbury from Hackersafe and Savannah Finney from ControlScan. By "wonderful", I really mean "wonderful." You won't find two nicer, more professional people anywhere, who bend over backwards to help you. My life has improved just by knowing them. Yes, they are that great. Unfortunately, this is business and my clients expect me to make and save them money.

HackerSafe Test

Hackersafe allowed us to run an A/B test on one of our clients. Half of the visitors saw the Hackersafe logo, the other half didn't. I felt the Hackersafe A/B data was a little skewed as they tagged duplicates by the same IP address. I fixed this by manually removing repeats who didn't have an order number. What I found was Hackersafe counted 112 legitimate orders as repeats and thus weren't included in the results they provided. In actuality, these 112 orders were repeat customers and should have been included. I have 25 days of data comprised of 1831 orders.

To throw another wrench into the test, this client sends an email blast out about every 2 days. Apparently, email can skew the results because existing customers already trust us and the HackerSafe logo has less of an impact. Because of this, I went one step farther and looked at each of the 1831 orders. Yahoo! gives me the ability to track if they are new or repeat customers so I looked at the days where new customers placed more orders than repeat customers. Of those days, it was a fairly even split of orders placed whether they saw the HackerSafe logo or not.

In aggregate, in the 25 day test period, I noticed an increase of orders of 4% (as opposed to the 12% HackerSafe claims). Because of the increase, I'm still skeptical, but we are willing to continue the tests. We'll run the HackerSafe logo on a full time basis for a few months and see what happens. Until then, I'm afraid I still haven't answered the question of whether or not you should pay for the HackerSafe logo. You should though, test it and be sure to look at the data file provided and review that data yourself. If you need any help or find any flaws in my methodology, give me a call.

ControlScan Test

ControlScan was going to let us do an A/B test but they use a third party software package that isn't that compatible with Yahoo. Because of that, we had to go by sales alone. In a 3 week period, the sales after ControlScan was added were fairly level with the 3 weeks prior. We think we could squeeze a 1% increase to ControlScan. Certainly not enough to justify itself.

This was actually very surprising to me because ControlScan consisted of tall skyscraper banners as well as a banner on the top of the website and check-out pages. HackerSafe was only a tiny little banner on the top of the website. I really thought ControlScan would outperform HackerSafe. Needless to say we removed the ControlScan banners and will follow up with a HackerSafe A/B test.

Final Word

Test, Test, Test. Results will differ on everyone's website. The websites we added the banners too already had a link to Yahoo security. We were really testing whether or not the name recognition of the banners would increase sales. Everybody I spoke with at the client site hadn't even heard of HackerSafe or ControlScan and nobody cared or said they would click on the banner to see what it was. The Marketing Director recently went to a site and noticed the HackerSafe logo but only because she knew we were testing it with her site. Is a commercial logo really better than just writing that your order is secure on the website headers? Does a customer really recognize "HackerSafe" or "ControlScan" as better than, "Your order is Secure" or a homemade "Site Security" banner linking to a descriptive page on your own website?

I can't show you the client banners we created and I'm not sure if I can copy the HackerSafe logos, but what would mean more to you:

Hackersafe Banner reading:
"HackerSafe tested July 13, 2007"

ControlScan Banner reading:
"verified July 13, 2007 - Verified Secure"

Client A:
"Secure Shopping - learn more"

Client B:
"Site Security - Yahoo Shopping"

Client C:
"ECommerce by Yahoo!"

I guess I still have to fight with myself on whether or not we want to recommend this product or not. Certainly bigger companies are using it, but does that make it right? If anybody has any information on these or other site security services, please comment or let me know.

Labels: controlscan, hackersafe, security, yahoo

I will be in San Jose attending the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition from June 4-7. Internet Retailer is the world's largest conference in e-retailing, where more than 4,000 online merchants from retail chains, catalog firms, web-only merchants and consumer manufacturers will share ideas and experiences on the one thing they have in common: web-based retailing. This is usually a good show and I come back with some great ideas for all my clients.

This year Kelly, one of our RTML Yahoo! Designers, is coming with me and we will be exhibiting with Yahoo at there booth. We recently exhibited with Yahoo at the PESA conference in Chicago and had a great time. Yahoo invited us to this show and we will be in the exhibit booth on Tuesday, June 5th from 11:00am to 3:00pm. Please stop by and say, "Hello!"

Karl Ribas, All Web's Project Manager will be attending the Search Marketing Expo in Seattle at the same time. It seems to be a great week for trade shows!

If you are in San Jose or Seattle, be sure to let us know. If not, I'm sure I'll post an update throughout the week and Karl will be updating about the SMX show.

Labels: internet, retailer, yahoo

My good friend and co-worker, Karl Ribas was recently interviewed by Joe Balestrino with Mr. SEO. I'm a bit behind in my podcasts and finally got to hear his interview this morning. It was a great discussion about PPC advertising. As with every great discussion, I feel my two cents worth will only make them better. So, as you listen to this great podcast, here is my 2 cents worth....

1 Cent: My first cent involves the ability to run A/B tests with Google Adwords. Joe briefly stated the ability was there but I feel that topic needs more time. The ability to run an A/B test will help virtually every aspect of PPC advertising, from landing page design to ad copy. When asked what to avoid in ad copy, Karl mentioned each business was different. Well, how can you tell what works for your business if you don't run A/B tests? Google make the ability to test so easy, that not to test, is a crime. Changing one word in your ad can make a big conversion difference. (Karl mentioned Rob Snell; Our friend and Yahoo Store conversion expert) By running against a control, you can guage just how much of a difference you'll get.

By testing different landing pages within same viewable ad, you can test various aspects of your landing page copy. Yahoo trackable links make testing not only your ads but the landing pages easy as pie!

By the way, Yahoo Search Marketing also allows for ad copy A/B testing as well.

In short, the ability to do A/B testing is easy to do and a necessity. Call me (or Karl) if you get stuck or need any help.

2 Cent: My second cent involves Karl's comment about his use of Yahoo Search if he wanted to buy something and Google search if he was researching. I think he's wrong. Some people might say that different people search using different engines and different styles, but since he doesn't follow my style, he's wrong. (Joke)

I search differently. If I'm looking to buy something, I use Google Adwords because those people are paying for the ad and therefore want to sell something. If I'm researching, I use the organic results and Alta Vista. I like to read reviews on Amazon or other sites where people review. Organic results are chock full of independent reviews on why something is good or bad.

For example, Kelly sold me on the Cingular Blackjack phone. Before I buy, I want to see other reviews so I search Google for "Cingular Blackjack" and read the organic results showing me various opinions and reviews that have been published. When I'm ready to buy, I click on the paid links. Alta Vista provides good organic results as well.

OK. There you have it. My 2 cents worth on Karl's interview with Mr. SEO. Please be sure to listen to the Podcast and all Joe's podcasts as they are very educational and informative for the seasoned SEO person as well as the do it yourselfer. It's full of legitimate information and not fluff about what the speakers did over the weekend. Karl's blog is great as well! Check them both out:

Karl Ribas Blog

Mr. SEO

Labels: balestrino, google, karl, ppc, ribas, seo, yahoo

If you haven't read my post on accepting PayPal as a payment option within your Yahoo! Store, you need to read it. Then, you need to read on....

PayPal and Yahoo! have partnered to launch a major new promotion for Yahoo! Store Merchants. Recently they completed an updated checkout flow for Yahoo! Stores that allows customers to checkout quickly by using PayPal Express Checkout.

Yahoo! clients that take advantage of this new checkout flow get a special shopping cart icon next to your Sponsored Search ads to show searchers that you accept PayPal for payments.

In addition, clients get $100 credit in Yahoo! Sponsered Search credit.

A $100 credit is nice, but the best part is you will pay no PayPal transaction fees through the end of the year on orders completed through PayPal Express Checkout. Did you catch that? NO PAYPAL FEES. It's a beautiful thing!

More Details can be found here: www.paypal.com/yahoosearch or contact us. We'll be glad to help you get set up.

Labels: paypal, store, yahoo

All Web Promotion has been invited to work the Yahoo! exhibit booth at the Professional Ebay Sellers Alliance trade show in Chicago, Wednesday, April 25.

We are very excited about the opportunity to work side by side with Yahoo. As Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Developers, we feel we can assist the attendees with there questions about Yahoo! and how we can assist them in developing there own Yahoo! Storefront.

I am very familliar with eBay. I've attended a couple eBay Live shows and happen to be a Gold Powerseller myself. I'm familliar with and am sure eBay will be pushing there own web based platform; ProStores. We here at All Web Promotion have developed ProStores sites and decided not to pursue the endeavor as we believe Yahoo! just can't be beat. Sure ProStores integrates with eBay but my opinion is that's about it. Both platforms have monthly fees and transaction fees so pricing is basically a wash. The differences come in the features of each account level. Yahoo! has Merchant Starter, Standard and Professional while ProStores has Business, Advanced and Enterprise.

If you are attending the Trade Show, stop by and say, "Hello" on Wednesday, April 25. We'd love to see you and tell you why we believe Yahoo! Merchant Solutions is the best fit for your web site needs.

Labels: ebay, prostores, yahoo

I was recently interviewed by Yahoo! for the the Insights Newsletter. You can read the interview in it's entirety here: Yahoo Small Business - Insights - February 2007

February 2007

E-commerce transactions, for the most part, are built on trust. That's why it's crucial to establish a sense of confidence among your web site's customers and visitors, who often consider purchasing your products or services sight unseen. If your visitors are unfamiliar with your site or wares, they may have natural concerns about security, safety, service, and the quality of your products. Through careful use of logos, design, and copywriting, you can communicate that your web site and business practices are trustworthy. Here are some ways you can inspire trust in your customers through careful design.

Read full article here: Yahoo Small Business - Insights - February 2007

Labels: insights, yahoo