Yahoo Merchant Starter: A Powerful Program to Become a Successful Online Seller

When someone has the expertise to handle millions of websites and managing them successfully, you can certainly rely on him to provide you assistance to setup and run your e-business. The name of Yahoo is enough to instill confidence in any person wishing to start his e-venture. Yahoo Merchant Starter is a great package for beginners as one gets great tools to make his site. No more hosting hassles with a great solution from Yahoo! Inc. Then there is a huge shopping cart full of varied features to satisfy the requirements of your potential customers. Making a site with Yahoo Merchant Starter is fun actually and you customize it on your own which is nothing more than drag and drop with so many tools at your disposal. One thing that is irritating is the 1.5% fee that Yahoo charges for every transaction conducted by your site which is much higher than others.

Excellent Features

When you choose to get associated with a giant like Yahoo!, you naturally expect a host of features, and Yahoo Merchant Starter does offer features that are tempting enough to go with Yahoo. Web hosting is a crucial part of any successful online venture, and with Yahoo’s expertise, you can rest assured of huge amount of web space and unlimited data transfer. You never have to think about the space your site utilizes when you choose to go with Yahoo. What this implies is that you can have a stock of more products in this software than any other merchant program on net. Technically, you can go up to 50,000 products in your inventory when you decide to use Yahoo Merchant Starter.

Inventory management and sales analysis is a breeze with Yahoo. You get a lot of reports which are in easy to understand formats and allow you to see your sales, number of products, average order size and much, much more. All this information is presented in the form of graphs which makes it easy for even a layman to understand the direction in which his e-venture is moving. One great feature of the software is advance tracking which allows you to know to which items your visitors go to on the web page, but this feature is only available with the more expensive packages.

You get attractive features like expanded order management and merchandising tools, the ability to export order data to a database, promotional schemes like gift certificates and coupons. The facility of a cross sell engine expands the horizons of an online seller. Another attraction of Yahoo merchant Starter is the presence of tools that allow the user to publish listings on Yahoo! Shopping. The user gets a huge traffic from the site but has to pay per click.

Installation of software

Signing up and installing the software to make your own site is like saying cheese to smile in front of a camera. You get advantage of Yahoo’s standalone hosting and Yahoo stores which mean you can design your page in myriad ways. You may be overwhelmed with choices, but this is Yahoo’s way of saying hello to a beginner. Using page wizards and site wizard tools, you can build your site in a jiffy. You get WYSIWYG layout using PageBuilder, which is a Java based tool. But the easiest way to build your page is through Yahoo’s SiteBuilder 2.0 which is even better than Microsoft’s FrontPage. You get 100’s of readymade templates to choose from and there are many time saving tools such as dynamic navigation bars that allow you to add text to images.

There is support for Adobe GoLive, Dreamweaver MX and MS FrontPage. Or you can choose to custom make HTML pages and upload them to have a unique site. You also get tools like search engine and a hit counter to add to your web page. For making a rich customized website, Yahoo Merchant Starter is the best among its competitors.

User friendly

Once you have successfully made your site, the next logical step is to see if it is easy to use. Though the site is primarily for you to use, the user interface has been kept simple enough to make it a pleasant experience for your potential customers. The menu options on the site are intuitive and the layout is simple for a beginner to start working. In fact, it is so simple that anyone can use it straight out of the box. The controls are such that you can operate by just having a look at your computer screen. One great feature of Yahoo Merchant Starter is 30 days free consultation to set you up and make you stand on your own feet. During this period you can ask about anything that you like about the operation of the site. There are FAQ’s and help features available that make everything easier.

Protection against Fraud

Customer transactions are absolutely secure with 128-bit encryption of SSL security. All transactions ask the customer to enter his CVV2 code which only genuine cardholders can enter when they have their cards in hand. Thus it makes it impossible for those who get other’s card numbers to transact on this site. There are further more tools for protection against fraud that are provided by the credit card companies.

There is a provision of blocking IP addresses which allow you to block customers from a particular geographical area. Yahoo Merchant Starter complies with Visa cardholder information security program (CISP).

Support and backup

You have no worries on the support front when associating with a giant like Yahoo. Getting to a representative is easy by dialing a toll free number 24 hours a day. Yahoo also has a prompt support through emails and you will always get a quick reply through email to all your queries. There are a number of online resources to provide help and assistance, and there are even video tutorials to explain everything in a step by step guidance. In short, you are never left in the lurch for want of help.

Conclusion

For beginners who aspire to set up a successful online store, Yahoo Merchant Starter is a great tool that provides all the necessary infrastructure and guidance to be up and running. Though it takes some time to set up your website, the effort is really worth putting in as you can come up with a great site that has the potential to attract a lot of customers. It is always prudent to take help from a giant, and in this sense your efforts in putting up an online business are well and truly worth their investment. 35% off Yahoo! Merchant Solutions packages + no setup fee (save $50)