Welcome to 2012

Rate Post:

 Loading ...

by Jennifer Farwell

Comments (1)

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

On behalf of the Yahoo! Small Business team, I’d like to welcome you all to a brand new year. Our sincerest thanks go out to you for continuing to allow us the opportunity to bring you new features and be a partner in your business success.

We’re currently hard at work on our first several feature releases of the year, and I look forward to providing more details about these in the weeks to come. In the meantime, now is a great time to have a look back at the 2011 holiday shopping season and to use your experiences to help you prepare for your store’s next big holiday rush (in some cases, this will be Valentine’s Day). It’s also a good time to do any post-holiday housekeeping that you haven’t yet done.

Here are a few things that, if you haven’t done them yet, may need your attention:

• Returns process and policies. You may currently be in the midst of post-holiday returns. If you’ve experienced customer confusion around your return policy, or have encountered problems or common questions during the returns process, it’s a great time to make note of them. Ensure your returns policy is prominent on your site, that the information is clear and up-to-date, and that it addresses any areas of customer confusion or questions that are coming up now. This can help you better set customer expectations and drive down contacts. While nobody enjoys returns, creating a smooth returns process can help you earn future business from the customers who return items.

• Marketing campaigns. If you’re using search or other marketing campaigns, make sure any holiday-specific messaging has been removed. You can also use analytics data collected over the holiday shopping season to update and optimize your campaigns.

• Store FAQs. Review the questions asked most by customers throughout the holiday season, and ensure that answers to these are included in your store’s list of frequently asked questions so customers can easily find the information they’re looking for.

• Copyright information. Update the copyright information on your site (change 2011 to 2012), and remove any holiday messaging and promotions that are no longer relevant.

I hope that all of you had a busy, successful, and enjoyable holiday season, and that you’ve had a great start to the new year.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business
Follow @YSmallBusiness on Twitter and “Like” us on Facebook

 Email This Post RSS feed Add to Del.ici.ous Digg this story