Hopefully all of the suggestions on the blog are implementable within Yahoo!–that’s the whole point of the blog. Specifically regarding 1st time buyers or repeat buyers there are ways to get this information to run a program such as this. The way you choose to do so would likely vary greatly depending on your store size, packing procedures, and the package you have.

You can get 1st time buyer status a few ways. Orders from the same shopper will show a new line in the Order Manager when reviewing an order labeled “Order from same customer”. The field appears just above the Merchant Notes area. Don’t see the field on an order? It’s likely a first time buyer.

Likewise if you wish to make a freebie part of a loyal customer reward program you can use the same field. You can also look at the report under the Statistics column labeled “Repeats”. This report ranks customers from most number of orders to fewest.

Now both of these methods are geared more for smaller stores where the orders per day allows you to review each order and look for such info on the order. Larger stores would likely use a more automated custom solution that could be integrated as part of an external order management system. In such a system, customer order data could be checked against the store’s customer database and orders qualifying for first time or repeat status would be flagged and marked accordingly to change the pick list prior to packing.

So this suggestion is certainly possible within the Yahoo! platform.