Yahoo! Small Business Webinar Recordings Now Available

Thank you to everyone who attended our Yahoo! Small Business webinars yesterday, and last Wednesday. We had a great time bringing these to you, and hope you found the sessions informative and enjoyable.

All five of the webinars were recorded and archived, and can now be accessed from our webinars page in online help. So if you had to miss a webinar, or want to review some of the information presented, or would like to share these webinars with someone you know, please visit the webinars page.

For any readers who missed our two days of webinars, here are the topics that were covered:

• Preparing for the Holidays — Opening a Niche Store with Paul Boisvert
  Learn how to create niche stores just in time for the holidays, and other marketing tips to prepare for the busiest time of year.

• E-Commerce Best Practices with Mike Ober
  Learn best practices to make the most of your Yahoo! investment so you can start seeing results right away.

• SEO Tips & Tricks with Rob Snell
  Learn best practices to drive customers to your store through organic search engine optimization.

• LIVE* Site Critiques
  Web site critiques for Yahoo! Store merchants, provided by a panel of experts on branding and conversion for Yahoo! stores.
  * Site critiques were live at time of archived webinar recording

• Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Add-ons & Features Showcase
  Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Developer Partners showcase some of their most useful product features to help make your online business more successful.

Thank you again for making this event a great success.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

October 2009 Release Notes

Early yesterday morning, the team here at Yahoo! Small Business rolled out a few new feature enhancements that we’re happy to let you know about.

First, merchants who use the Simple Promotional Email tool can now include coupon offers targeted for specific items when sending an email to their customers. So, if you’d like to send an email featuring three items (or items from three categories), and wish to include a coupon offer in your email that is specific to those items or item categories only, you can now do so. Or, if you have a coupon offer you wish to extend but don’t want to include certain items from your store in this offer (to avoid discounts on low-margin items, for example), you can do that too. If you choose to include a targeted coupon offer in your email, we recommend ensuring that any items featured in your email are also included in the coupon offer.

Next, there is a new option for your product catalog feeds that are downloaded by shopping comparison engines and other third-party sites, such as Google Product Search. In the Search Engines section of Store Manager, along with the options to enable or disable your product catalog feeds, you now have the option to "enable but do not syndicate" the feed — meaning the product catalog feed is enabled, but will not be readable by shopping comparison engines or other sites. This option is designed for merchants who wish to manage their own product catalog feeds.

Product catalog feed options in the Search Engines section of Store Manager.

You may also notice a change in the Order Settings column of Store Manager. The "Fax/Email" link has been renamed "Email," and the subsequent section of Store Manager now provides a secondary "Email to:" field and delivery settings. Custom email delivery options may be set for each of these fields, including the frequency of the order emails, and the format you wish to receive these in. Merchants who previously used the faxed orders feature may wish to receive orders in PDF format, in place of the faxed copies of orders they used to receive. You can choose to send orders by email to one email address or a set of email addresses in one format (for example, in PDF format, with "Immediately" as the delivery frequency), while also sending order emails to a second email address or set of email addresses with the ability to select a different format and frequency.

New secondary “Email to” field in the Email section of Store Manager.

If you’ve ever received calls or emails from customers who have experienced problems entering gift certificate codes during checkout due to commonly confused letters and numbers being part of code, you may be happy to learn that we’ve changed how gift certificate codes are generated. The character set used when generating gift certificate codes now excludes letters and numbers that are frequently mistaken for similar letters and numbers (for example, 0 and O, 1 and L, 6 and G, and so on). With this change, we’ve aimed to make the checkout experience easier for customers using gift certificates, and to help decrease the number of customer inquiries made to merchants regarding gift certificate codes.

Lastly, one more housekeeping item for merchants using Cross-Sell on product pages to note: Cross-Sell items will now be displayed on product pages for unorderable items. When an item is not available to be ordered, Cross-Sell provides a great opportunity to suggest alternative items that, if aware of, a customer may choose to purchase instead. If you’re a Merchant Solutions Standard, Professional, or Yahoo! Store merchant and don’t have Cross-Sell enabled, now’s a great time to start using it as you get ready for the holidays. Read up on optimal cross-selling for the holidays in a previous post to the blog.

We’d be happy to hear your feedback on these enhancements, and encourage you to write in with your comments. As always, we appreciate the opportunity to bring you these enhancements, and hope that these, along with other the features released throughout this year, are helpful in your preparations for the holiday shopping season.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

Yahoo! Small Business Webinar Registration

As posted to the blog last week, this Wednesday, October 7, and next Wednesday, October 14, we’ll be holding a series of free webinars to help you learn how to optimize your sales. Registration for each of these webinars is now available. You must register separately for each session you wish to attend, using the "Register Now" link provided beside the webinar title in the list below.

For example, if you wish to attend the "Preparing for the Holidays" webinar on October 7, along with the "SEO Tips & Tricks for Yahoo! Merchant Solutions" and "Yahoo! Merchant Solutions LIVE Site Critiques" webinars on October 14, you must complete three separate registration forms — one for each webinar. First-time registrants will be asked to create a password to complete the registration process.

For descriptions of each webinar, please see last week’s webinar announcement.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009:

Preparing for the Holidays — Opening a Niche Store with Paul Boisvert — Register Now
* This webinar is geared toward merchants with sales of up to $500K annually
Learn how to create niche stores just in time for the holidays, and other marketing tips to prepare for the busiest time of year.
11:00am-12:00pm PT / 2:00-3:00pm ET

Wednesday, October 14, 2009:

Store Optimization Series
* These webinars are geared toward merchants of all sizes

• E-Commerce Best Practices — Back to Basics with Mike Ober— Register Now
  Learn best practices to make the most of your Yahoo! investment so you can start seeing results right away.
  9:00-9:45am PT / 12-12:45pm ET

• SEO Tips & Tricks for Yahoo! Merchant Solutions with Rob Snell — Register Now
  Learn best practices to drive customers to your store through organic search engine optimization.
  10:00-11:00am PT / 1:00-2:00pm ET

• Yahoo! Merchant Solutions LIVE Site Critiques — Register Now
  Join a panel of experts on branding and conversion for Yahoo! stores, for live web site critiques. Always a merchant favorite.
  11:30-12:30am PT / 2:30-3:30pm ET

• Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Add-ons & Features Showcase — Register Now
  Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Developer Partners showcase some of their most useful product features to help make your online business more successful.
  1:00-3:00pm PT / 4:00-6:00pm ET

We look forward to seeing you at the webinars.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business