Colorado Web Solutions

Cyber Monday Tip: Last Minute Details for your Yahoo Store

Posted on November 28th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Part 14 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Weekend Edition: Cyber Monday Yahoo Store Preparation Tip #14: Checking the last Minute Details

Hi everyone, I know it’s the weekend and I typically only post for you on weekdays, but Cyber Monday is in just two days, so I think this is a good time to give you a few last minute things to consider. These should all be fairly simple ideas so you should be able to take care of all of them in just a few minutes.

1. Make sure that your Yahoo Store Analytics are turned on and collecting data. Read more about this here.
2. Double check the credit card you are using for Google Adwords payments. Has it been paid down enough to avoid getting declined and thus shutting off your ads this weekend?
3. Be sure to import your current customers from previous orders into your email campaign program before you send out your next promotional email.
4. Post something about your store on your Twitter page. Do the same for Facebook. Encourage people to click the link they see.

That should be enough for you today. It’s a busy weekend, but be sure to check all those items off as soon as you can.

I’ll see you all on Monday. It’s time. :)

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Cyber Monday Tip #13: Get your Email Campaigns Ready

Posted on November 27th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Part 13 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo Store Preparation Tip #13: Prepare your email campaigns in advance

I could go on about email campaigns for hours, but today I’m going to just talk about a few aspects. First of all, if you do not have any email campaigns planned, it’s time to do that. Get it done this weekend. I would suggest up to 3 emails for the month of December, don’t do anymore or people will get annoyed.

Here’s a few tips for these emails you’re going to prepare.

1. Make sure your Yahoo Store email campaigns have a point. Why are you sending it? What is the customers benefit for reading it?
2. Be sure to have a strong “call to action”. Ask your customer to do something. Encourage them.
3. Never ever send out an email with the same content the next week. Always change it. Even if the offers have not changed. Re-write it, re-market it. You will guarantee yourself unsubscribers from your list by sending a duplicate this time of year.
4. Don’t overcrowd or underwhelm. Keep your emails simple, but make sure (as i mentioned above) to have a clear point and goal with your emails.
5. Don’t send them Monday morning. If your primary customers typically shop from their homes for your products, consider sending your first email Sunday late afternoon. Just as they settle down to start shopping. If your customers typically shop from you while at work, I’d suggest a mailing either Tuesday mid-morning or possibly Monday Mid afternoon.

Ok, the list could go on forever, but I’ll stop there. If you’d like more information on our Constant Contact marketing services, please visit this link:

http://www.coloradowebsolutions.com/yahoo-store-email-marketing.html

Be sure to get those email’s planned and implemented soon! I’ll be back next week with some thoughts on Analytics. See you all then.

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Happy Thanksgiving Yahoo Store Owners

Posted on November 26th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

To all of our clients, readers and friends, we wish you a relaxing Thanksgiving Day and hope that starting tomorrow morning you will be too busy to read. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Good luck this weekend and for the entire month of December. We’re all rooting for you.

Off to eat some turkey.

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Cyber Monday Tip #12: Finalize Last Minute Promotions

Posted on November 26th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Part 12 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo Store Preparation Tip #12: Getting your December Promotions organized and ready.

Today I want to talk about your last minute holiday promotions in your Yahoo Store. Before I get to that though, I would like to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving.

If you have not ever offered “last minute deals” you may want to consider trying that this season. We have seen a variety of promotions, but the ones that seem to work extremely well in some industries are discounted or free expedited shipping the final week before Christmas and last minute blowout deals on specific products.

Discounted Expedited Shipping

It’s a fact that the week before Christmas, online sales drop considerably due to the shipping delay and possibility of non-arrival on Christmas morning. What if you could capture more of those last minute shoppers before they start going to the physical stores? This doesn’t work for all merchants by any means, but for those that have products lines condusive to this, it may be worth considering. Especially if you want to milk more sales out of the rush.

Consider offering Free or heavilly discounted Two Day Shipping to customers the final week before Christmas. I’ve personally seen it work. Again, it only works if your product line allows for it size wise, etc, but if it does, this is a fantastic promotion. I could go on and on with the ideas regarding the shipping promotions, but I hope you get the idea. Be creative. What works for your business?

Last Minute Blow Out Deals

If you offer seasonal products, or even if you stocked up for the holidays and didn’t sell as much as you anticipated, the final week before Christmas is a fantastic time to blow out overstock or closeout inventory. Don’t wait until the traditional closeout season, you’ve got the customers now, they want to buy, if you have too much, discount it and move it before the rush slows down. Again, this is another great way to increase those sales that final week. Promote the heck out of it. Be sure it’s on your home page as well as your blog and email blasts. Stay Creative. How can this tip work for your business?

Ok, that’s all for today, I’m ready to go eat some turkey. Happy Thanksgiving again everyone. I’ll be back with more tomorrow. I think we’ll discuss email campaigns.

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Cyber Monday Tip #11: Your Holiday Shipping Deadlines

Posted on November 25th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Part 11 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo Store Preparation Tip #11: Your Holiday Shipping Deadlines and Happy Customers

Today I want to address the topic of holiday shipping deadlines. We all know that at some point in December, shipped orders are no longer going to be arriving in time for Christmas. If you have not established your holiday shipping deadlines yet, I would suggest that you do so immediately.

If you do not have information from UPS or your shipper, chances are you will be able to get a time frame map on their website for holiday shipping. Look at the map and determine the longest time frame for each delivery method. For example, if you are shipping from New York and shipping to Washington State is the furthest ZONE on your map, use that time frame for your reference. Then consider processing time. Do you ship the same day? Is there a delay? Be sure to add that into your calculation.

Once you’ve determined your deadline dates (again, be sure to check for each shipping method you offer), be sure to post those deadlines in a prominent or at least an easy to find location on your site. Be VERY clear about deadlines. I would also HIGHLY suggest adding a disclaimer to the deadlines stating that you are not responsible for carier delievery issues, etc.

So that’s all for today. Be sure to get those deadlines posted soon. It’s time.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another post on Last Minute Shopping Deals.

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Cyber Monday Tip #10: Yahoo Store Shopping Feeds

Posted on November 24th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Part 10 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo! Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo! Store Preparation Tip #10: Check your product feeds for shopping engines

I’m going to give you a nice simple tip today. You have no excuses with this one. Today we are going to check your product catalog feeds and make sure that you have them turned on for the shopping comparison engines. In a nutshell, these XML feeds allow other sites to pull your products into their comparison engines and then link back to your site with new customers. I would recommend that every merchant that sells items to the general public turn their product feeds on.

Here’s how to turn your Yahoo Store shopping feeds on.

• Log into your Yahoo! Store’s Manager
• Under the PROMOTE heading in the second row of options you will see “Search Engines” – click that.
• You will see three rows of radio buttons. Ensure that ALL THREE are checked as “Enabled”
• Click DONE
• By checking those three buttons you are turning on your sitemap and allowing your products to be listed in comparison engines.
• Return to your Store Manager main page. If necessary, publish your order settings.
• If your site map was not previously turned on, you will need to publish it once to build it. If your sitemap (the first radio button above) was already on, you can skip this step. You’re done.
• To publish your site map enter your store editor. Click on the VARIABLES button. Then Click UPDATE. Now Publish. You’re finished.

Would you like more control over your product datafeeds? Are you submitting your products to Google Base, Shopping.com etc? Read This!

For those merchants that want to take their product feed and overall marketing to a new level, we highly suggest using a datafeed service designed specifically for Yahoo Stores. We have tried them all and hands down, our favorite service is Go Data Feed. They can help you automatically submit your products (with the correct categories per engine!) to all of the major shopping comparison engines. Free engines, paid engines, they support just about everything! By far the best way to get your Yahoo Store products listed correctly in Google Base / Google Products / Froogle.

If you are interested, here’s some more information on our website:
http://www.coloradowebsolutions.com/yahoo-store-godatafeed.html

I hope you enjoyed this super simple Yahoo Store tip today. Don’t wait. Get it done.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with some thoughts on Holiday Shipping Deadlines.

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Cyber Monday Tip #9: Are your Product Pages Selling??

Posted on November 23rd, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Part 9 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo! Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo! Store Preparation Tip #9: Making Sure Your Product Pages are your Top Salesperson

Today we are going to take a close look at your Yahoo! Store’s product pages. Your product page is the ONE PAGE that you are guaranteed your customer will see on your site. They might bypass your home page, they could skip past the category and sub category pages, but they can’t avoid the product page. In most cases, it’s the only way to get a product added to their cart.

I mention this because I often times see very plain and or almost blank product pages on far too many sites.

So… let’s take a look at your number one selling product. Head there in your store right now. What do you see? Are all of your questions answered? Do you get a clear picture as to what it is you’re selling? How are the images? Has anyone called recently or emailed recently with a question about this product? Is that answer online now?

Let’s take a look at what the ultimate Product Page on a Yahoo! Store has in my opinion:

• Nice Layout: Product Image, Price, Options, availability and order button should be above the fold (top part of the page that you can see before scrolling down)
• Clear Imagery: At least one product image that can be enlarged for better viewing. If you have multiple images available (either alternative views or colors) be sure to add them. If you do not have the ability to display more than two images in your Yahoo! Store, you may want to consider adding a Multiple Images enhancement.
• Complete Description: This should be in paragraph form and should describe the product. Many manufacturers provide their own product descriptions, and we would suggest using those, but we would also suggest writing your own additional description for your top selling products. What else can you mention about this product that is not already included in the manufacturers description? Remember those Keywords you created in Tip #1? Make sure some of those are included in your own description. This will help both your customers and the search engines.
• Additional Information: Either as a bullet list or sentences, the Additional Information would include things like warranty info, dimensions, weight, specifications, etc. Things that your customers may want to know, but details that do not typically belong in the main description.
• Product Reviews: Product Reviews are a fantastic way to reinforce your products. We highly suggest using them if you can. For all of your Top Products, have your staff add a few initial reviews to get the ball rolling.
• Promotional Information: Remember, your customers may not have visited any other page on your site, so be sure to include any promotional items related to each item on the product page. For example, if you offer free shipping on any order over $100, every one of your products that cost more than $100 should have an icon or sentence about how “This Item Ships Free!”. We offer an enhancement that will do this automatically for you! If the product is on sale, consider adding a “% saved” or “$ saved” line so they see the value of what they’re looking at.
• Clear Call to Action: As silly as it sounds, double check your “Add to Cart” button and make sure it’s easy to see and encourages your customers to buy. Be sure there is nothing confusing about it. Does it stand out? What does it say? Add to Cart? Buy Now? Get One? Make sure it’s asking the customer to DO something.
• “You might also Consider” Items: Not every product is gong to interest every one of your customers, so when your customers do arrive at a product that wasn’t quite right, how about suggesting alternative items right there on the product page? Yahoo! Stores can do this in a variety of ways. You can use the Yahoo! Store Cross Sell Version 2.0 and automatically have your store suggest products, or your store can be coded so that you can also manually specify the exact related items for each product.
• Product FAQ’s: If you receive a lot of email or calls about particular products, consider adding a Product FAQ section on those products. This can be a part of your caption or coded as a separate field in your store. List the general questions and your answers right there on the page. This will be great for SEO as well as instant customer service. In the future as repeat questions continue to come in about products, continue to add those replies directly to the product page on your site. Your customers and sales reps will thank you.
• Recently Viewed Items: Again, in an effort to make your customers shopping experience as easy as possible, I suggest letting your customers leave “bread crumbs” of their travels so they can easily get back to previous products and compare and contrast with their current selection. This is easily accomplished with Recently Viewed items.

There are a number of additional things that can be adjusted on your product pages in order to help you sell, but I think these basic ideas will be a great start for you between now and Cyber Monday.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some thoughts on Shopping Feeds and Search Engines and your Yahoo! Store.

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Cyber Monday Tip #8: Your Top Selling Category Page

Posted on November 20th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Part 8 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo! Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo! Store Preparation Tip #8: Tweak your Yahoo! Store Main Category Pages

Today I want you to look at your number one selling category online. Figure out whatever it is and go to that main category page. What do you see? Is it just a listing of additional sub categories and or products? Or is there actual content on that page? Do you get a feel for what you are selling and a desire to buy? Or just another “Yahoo Store List”. If you are only seeing listings further into the site, you are missing out on HUGE SEO benefits as well as great benefits for your customers.

Today’s task is to create content for your number one selling category page. Write a paragraph or two about the category. Be sure to include some of your keywords from Tip #1. If your site allows for images on your category pages, I’d suggest considering adding a lifestyle or good photo that fits specifically with the category you’ve selected. If you need good economical stock photos, I always check istockphoto.com first.

Once you’ve written your paragraph or two and found a good photo to use, get them loaded on your site asap. These inner pages with content will be critical to your long term SEO success.

If you’ve still got time, I’d suggest doing the same thing to your next few top selling categories. I promise, it’s worth the extra work. If you really want your store to succeed in the search engines, this is a “must do” step.

OK, get our there and start writing. I’ll expect to see more content online by this time tomorrow :)

Next week we’ll go over your product pages!

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Cyber Monday Tip #7: Twitter and Yahoo! Stores

Posted on November 19th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Part 7 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo! Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo! Store Preparation Tip #7: You should be using Twitter with your Yahoo! Store

Twitter is one of those anomalies that amazes me. It’s a cool idea, but the fact that not seeing a twitter link on a major site these days is now considered strange amazes me. I can’t tell you if the twitter craze is going to be around even a year from now, but as I type, if you’re not on-board, you’re behind. If you’re not tweeting for your business yet, it’s not too late, start today!

The good news is that it’s really easy to get started. Just go to twitter.com and click JOIN. Takes a few seconds and you’re in. You can start tweeting right away. If you’re feeling creative, you can go into your settings and change your backgrounds, your icons and some of your “status” information.

Also, be sure to add a link to your twitter page from your Yahoo! Store. Typically the footer is the easiest place to add that. If you are not HTML savvy, here’s simple code you can add:

<a href=”http://www.twitter.com/YOURTWITTERID”>Follow us on Twitter</a>

So what should you be tweeting? What do people want to hear? It really depends on your customers, but one of the big trends I’ve seen starting to pop up are twitter exclusive deals. Usually in the form of a coupon. It’s a great way to track the use of your twitter posts as well! TIP: be sure to include an expiration date or time frame. Tweets don’t go away, they are there for all time in theory, so be sure to add stipulations.

Other things we’ve seen success with are new product or product line announcements, big sales on popular lines or categories, free shipping deals, overstock deals, product news releases and more.

Like I said, I can’t say that twitter is here to stay, but for now, use it. It’s a great tool. It’s been widely adopted and for the time being, it’s working.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with yet another tip for your Yahoo! Store. I think we’ll tackle your main category pages!

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Cyber Monday Tip #6: Your Return Policies

Posted on November 18th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Part 6 of our month long Cyber Monday Prep Tips Series. Every day, we have been giving you one small piece of advice to check, fix or confirm within your Yahoo! Store in preparation for Cyber Monday 2009. View Past Yahoo! Store Tips.

Cyber Monday Yahoo! Store Preparation Tip #6: Your Return Policy

Returns were the least favorite part of my 8 years of experience in retail ecommerce. And on the flip side, returns are my least favorite part about online ordering as a customer as well. I’m not alone in these feelings, so you should take extra care to keep your customers as informed as possible about your return policy.

First of all, if you don’t have a return policy online yet, create one asap. You’ll be glad you did. And every time you run into another “strange issue”, you’ll want to update your return policy to cover that as well.

So what should your return policy cover? At the very minimum it should explain; how long your return period is, how to send back an item, do they need to get an RA number? Where do they ship it? Do you suggest that they insure their packages and ship with a service that can guarantee delivery like UPS or FedEx? (HINT: you should!) Do you specify how long it will be before they see the actual credit on their account? Do you need them to include anything in their package other than the product? (Probably so!) Do you allow for exchanges with your returns? Or would you prefer that they re-order online? What happens (what’s the penalty) if they do return an item after the specified return policy window? Who pays for the shipping on returns?

These are all questions that should be answered clearly and firmly in your return policy online. There are a number of other elements that you could include as well, but in order to keep this short, we’ll stop at the basics.

So get onto your site and READ your entire return policy. Do you answer all the questions above? If so, congratulations! If not, get to work today.

Tomorrow I’ll be writing a little bit about twitter and how you can get started immediately using it for your Yahoo! Store.

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