Yahoo! Small Business is on Twitter

Why We’re There

Almost three weeks ago, Yahoo! Small Business officially entered the Twitterverse. It’s a pretty exciting place to be, and lots of individuals and companies are leveraging its unique simplicity to share information in new ways. Yahoo!, as a company, has been using Twitter to engage with users for some time now, and so when we in Yahoo! Small Business asked ourselves, “Should we be on Twitter?” the answer was a resounding YES. Why, you ask? For the simple reason that thousands and thousands of our customers and partners are already there.

If you’d like to follow us, we’re @YSmallBusiness, and here are just a few of the ways we plan on using Twitter:

• Listening. We want to better understand what excites, frustrates, and drives our customers and what we can do to better serve them.

• Sharing best practices. We’ll be drawing from the successes of our customers, and the expertise of our developers, partners, and employees. Don’t hesitate to let us know what kinds of tips and advice you feel you need.

• Providing updates. We’ll share the latest from Yahoo! Small Business, from product updates to events and conferences.

• And yes, bragging. We want the world to know how incredible our customers are. Yahoo!’s customers are inspiring entrepreneurs who sell important, fascinating, and fun products and services. We can’t wait to share some of their stories.

Unfortunately, Twitter simply cannot do everything. So for customer support inquiries, we’ll continue to direct you to our contact us form for specific questions, and the System Status page for system updates.

What We’ve Learned So Far

Without getting into too much detail, here are four things we’ve learned (or at least have a new appreciation for) after three weeks:

1. Social media conversations are exciting and…different. For years and years, marketers controlled the message and customers listened. Now? We are one voice among many equal voices. We knew this would be the case, but there’s no substitute for experiencing this change directly.

2. Saying things on Twitter is one thing, but getting people to listen is an equally important element of success. It takes thought and planning to build a large and relevant audience.

3. There are some useful tools out there that help you extend the capabilities of Twitter and measure your impact. A few of our favorites so far are TweetDeck, Archivist, MyTweeple, and Twitalyzer. Additional suggestions of Twitter add-ons are always welcome!

4. Don’t just jump in with social media without a plan, but don’t over plan either. Make sure you think before you begin tweeting. Start with thinking about your customers. Are they active in social media? If so, where? Second, think about what you hope to accomplish with social media. As Forrester and others recommend, deciding which technology to use comes after you’ve thought about customer and objective. But don’t wait too long either. You’ll never be able to plan for every scenario that might arise.

So please stay tuned (and follow us!) for more developments on Twitter.

Eric Gilbert
Yahoo! Small Business
Follow @YSmallBusiness on Twitter

Yahoo! Store Merchants and Developers Team Up for Haiti Relief Fund

This is the kind of news we really like to share. If you’ve been thinking of how you can help support Haiti relief efforts, you’re not alone. As of the time of this blog post, 13 Yahoo! store merchants and developer partners have come together to raise money with a week of offers that benefit Haiti disaster relief funds.

During the week of February 1-5, the following Yahoo! stores will donate a percentage of every sale to charities including the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Samaritan’s Purse, and World Vision:

• All Things Jeep
• Brides’ Village
• Bright and Bold
• Calypso Parrot
• Classic Charms
• Nature Chest
• Shop the Gift Basket Store
• Shower-Curtains.com
• Titanium-Buzz

The following Yahoo! Merchant Solutions developer partners are also playing a key role in this week of fundraising, either through donating their services to help with this event, or by donating portions of their own sales:

• ET Productions
• Exclusive Concepts
• EYStudios
• Your Store Wizards

Kudos to these merchants and developers for coming together to support relief efforts for Haiti. To learn more about what each store and developer is doing, visit the event’s information page.

If you’re a Yahoo! store or a developer partner also donating percentages of sales to Haiti relief, please let us and Yahoo! Store blog readers know by leaving a comment. Please note: in order to be posted, your comment must include a link to an information page on your site that outlines what your business is doing to help the relief efforts.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

Shopping Engines Success for Yahoo! Stores Webinar With Special Guest Rob Snell

On Wednesday, January 27, from 10-11 a.m. PST, join SingleFeed and special guest Rob Snell (author of Yahoo! Store for Dummies and frequent Yahoo! Store Blog guest blogger) as they host a free webinar that looks at getting started with shopping engines, employing best practices for success, and learning to streamline the process.

During this webinar, SingleFeed and Rob Snell will look at:

• Why retailers partner with shopping engines
• How to list your products
• Tips for optimizing your product feed
• A real customer success story

Register for the webinar.

January 2010 Release Notes

Earlier today, we rolled out our first release of the new year. While today’s release contained a number of feature enhancements that we’d like to call your attention to, we’re happy to tell you that bringing you customer registration features in 2010 has been one of our top development priorities over the last several months.

Next time you log in to your Store Manager, you may notice some or all of the following:

Alternate shipping credit option in Coupon Manager

At times, orders for which free shipping coupons are redeemed may not qualify for free shipping. For example, the free shipping method included in a coupon offer may not be available for the location a customer wishes to ship their order to – such as orders being shipped internationally, or to locations outside of the contiguous United States – or a customer may wish to use a shipping method not included in the offer to receive their order at an earlier date.

Now, you may include an alternate shipping credit with free shipping coupon offers, which deducts a specified dollar amount from an order’s subtotal when free shipping cannot be applied. By offering your customers a credit towards shipping when free shipping cannot be used, you may save orders that would otherwise have been abandoned.

Choose to include an alternate shipping credit with free shipping coupon offers.

Select Store Owner tool (Yahoo! Store accounts with multiple administrators)

With the release of our Access Manager tool last August, stores must have a single user designated as the store owner. Some Yahoo! Store accounts have multiple administrators with the same level of access, and a single store owner cannot easily be identified to be assigned the owner access role. If you have administrator access to one of these accounts, you will soon receive an email notifying you that a store owner must be selected, and you will be directed to use the Select Store Owner tool via the "Access" link in Store Manager. A notice regarding this will also appear in Store Manager.

Once an owner has been selected, all users with administrator access for that store will be notified of the owner selection via email. The email notification will include both the Yahoo! ID of the store owner, and the Yahoo! ID of the user who made the owner selection.

All Yahoo! Store accounts must have a single user designated as the store owner.

Ability to add multiple URLs for real-time order posts

If you’re using multiple services or applications that you wish to make real-time order posts to, you’ll be happy to know that the Real-Time Link Settings page in Store Manager now allows you to add up to five real-time order post URLs. If there’s a service you haven’t been using because it required an additional real-time order post URL, you can now go ahead and add a URL for that service. Or, if you’ve been using a relay service in order to use multiple services, you can now stop the relay service. This has a potential PCI compliance benefit to you, as data will only be relayed by Yahoo!, without having to go through the extra step of a relay service. The format of the order posts may be specified for each individual URL you enter (Yahoo! Format, ECML, XML, or OBI).

Doctype added to v2 Editor pages

While v3 Editor displays a doctype for Editor pages, v2 Editor previously did not. To allow for better ease of store development, a doctype has been added to v2 Editor pages, and is customizable upon request. If you or your developer wish to set a custom doctype, please contact us.

Validation of merchant-input HTML in Checkout Manager

At times, you may enter your own HTML into various regions in Checkout Manager. However, if a cart is secure or a buyer is within the checkout flow, any references to insecure (http) links rather than secure (https) links will cause a customer’s browser to display a warning that the page is not secure, which can negatively impact conversion. To help prevent this from happening, Checkout Manager will now validate merchant-input HTML for references to insecure (http) links, and display a warning message if these references are found.

Yahoo! Web Analytics product view tracking enhancement

Previously, page views of items set as not orderable were not tracked by Yahoo! Web Analytics. As many non-orderable items are items that are temporarily out of stock, but are still useful to track, we’ve made an enhancement that allows tracking of page views for any item with a value entered in the Price field, even if the item is not orderable. If an item does not have a price, a value of 0 must be entered in order for the page view of the item to be recorded. Learn more.

We appreciate the opportunity to bring you these enhancements, and look forward to bringing you new features this year. Should you have any questions about the enhancements released today, please consult our online help center, or contact us.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business