Archive for the ‘Best Practices’ Category
Top Holiday Tips from Profit Minded
Wednesday, September 19th, 2012
Can you believe it’s already nearing the end of September? While it’s technically still summer for a couple more days, we at Yahoo! Small Business have the same thing on our minds that you do: the holiday shopping season. It’s just around the corner, and that’s why Owen Linderholm has written a special top holiday tips blog post for Profit Minded, the Yahoo! Small Business Advisor blog.
Check out “Top Tips for Small Business Ecommerce Sales This Holiday” for a great checklist of important holiday dates, and top preparation and execution tips [...]
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Optimize Images and Lighten your Page Weights – Today!
Friday, April 6th, 2012
Sounds like this is going to be an article for geeks, right? Wrong. Well, I hope the geeks read it too. This is for anyone that owns or runs an ecommerce web site, but especially the tens of thousands of merchants who rely on Yahoo! to process billions of dollars in annual online sales through the Yahoo! Merchant Solutions platform – the #1 Hosted Ecommerce Solution in the Internet Retailer® Top 500 and Second 500. Whether you own the business or run the daily operations of the web site, these are two important topics for you – and I am going to provide 3 recommendations that will help you make quick changes, today.
Before we begin, let me define what I mean here by "optimize images." Images can be product images or graphics – essentially any file in an image format. Every week, I view hundreds of web sites. A consistent finding is that almost all image files that I see on web pages can have their file size reduced without impacting image quality. In geekspeak, this is called "lossless image optimization." Huh? You heard me right – these images have unnecessary bytes that bloat the file size. When the bytes are removed from the file, the only impact is a smaller file size – and a smaller file size means a lighter page weight. A lighter page weight means a faster page load time – and we all like [...]
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Here Come the Holidays, Part Three: Make Ordering Easy
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
Yesterday on the blog, we looked at ways to impress your customers during the holiday shopping season, your holiday promotions, recommending items to customers, and tools you can use to get the most from your store. On Monday, we discussed that all-important first step of getting organized before the holiday rush. In today’s post, which is the last of our three-part series, we have a couple of tips for making ordering faster and easier so customers don’t encounter hurdles while shopping from your store or during checkout. We’re also leaving you with a few resources to check out for more great holiday advice.
Make ordering faster and easier
While it may seem obvious, one of the most important things you can do to help increase your conversion rate is to provide a smooth and speedy ordering experience. Here are two ways you can do this [...]
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Here Come the Holidays, Part Two: Impressions and Promotions
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
Yesterday, we kicked off our three-part series about getting your store ready for the holidays with tips for getting organized for the holiday shopping season. Today’s post offers tips for impressing your customers and planning your promotions, and suggests tools to use that can help you get the most from your store this holiday season.
Impress your shoppers by providing a great shopping experience
There’s no better time than the holidays to impress your shoppers by setting expectations, making your store easy to shop from, and providing excellent customer service. When customers can easily find the products they’re looking for, information about shipping and returns, and your contact information, you’re creating a shopping experience that can bring you repeat business.
Here are a few suggestions for how you can achieve this [...]
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