Segment Yahoo Store Customers with Customer Manager

Posted on June 29th, 2011 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

While many of our clients have already integrated Yahoo’s Customer Registration, we’ve been getting a lot of questions regarding the Customer Manager and how this can be used to more effectively manage your existing customer base. I thought it would be a good idea to briefly cover some of the major features and benefits available via the Customer Manager link found in Store Manager.

Yahoo! Store Customer Manager

Customer Manager at its most basic level is designed to generate reports that store owners can use to more effectively understand and target their customer base. The reports allow owners to sort and filter relevant customer information and past order data. Prior to this important release, there was not a way to access or use any of the customer information collected via the Customer Registration module. Now, store owners can filter customers into specific groups or segments, gaining a better understanding of who their customers are – which translates to better marketing strategies.

The filtering and sorting allows store owners to find out what products customers are buying and when. Owners can use this information to create unique “single-use” coupons designed as an advanced method of up-selling or cross-selling. Owners can use email marketing, showcasing new or sale items targeted to specific customers who have purchased similar items in the past. The filters are quite powerful and can be used to show order values, order histories, total number of orders and much more.

If used properly, the Customer Manager can be a powerful tool to understand your customer buying habits. If you’re currently using Customer Registration and you haven’t taken a look at the Customer Manager, we strongly suggest you take some time to review what this feature can do.

For more information on Customer Registration installs, please click here:
http://www.coloradowebsolutions.com/blog/general-news/yahoo-store-customer-registration-installation-starting-at-150/

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Should you add Cascading Menu’s to your Yahoo Store?

Posted on June 29th, 2010 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

At Colorado Web Solutions, one of our most sought after add-on features for Yahoo! Stores is the Cascading Menu’s RTML enhancement. While expanding category navigation features can be nice and in some cases a must-have for client’s sites – not all stores need or should have them.

Cascading Menu’s or Navigation Drop-down Menu’s essentially allow customers to drill deep within a site’s category structure simply by hovering over a main category on the navigation. The Cascading Menu then reveals what’s “underneath” that category without the customer manually clicking through. As the category list expands the customer can click on any of the exposed links which will take them directly to that page. (look at the navigation on the Colorado Web Solutions site for an example)

The ideal Yahoo store candidate for Cascading Menu’s would be a store that is high in product selection, having deep category/sub-category structures. While there are arguments to be made for having customers click through sub-category pages, esecially if you have an extensive product line, generally the less number of clicks to get to a Product Detail page, the better chance your site will have for capturing the conversion.

An important consideration when choosing to have Cascading Menu’s or not – is whether or not your product line will be intuitively recognizable to your customers or if they’ll need detailed information on a category level which will help steer them to the correct product. For example – let’s say your Yahoo store is offering complex or technically challenging products which aren’t easily understood by the average customer. If that is your case, you might consider forgoing Cascading Menus and instead focus on detailed category page descriptions which if clicked through in succession from the homepage end up “informing” the customer as they move through the sub-category structure. The category page descriptions in essence can help the customer make an informed purchase and help drive the customer to the correct detail page.

For most clients however their product lines aren’t nearly so complex and customers will already know what category/product they’re looking for, or at least have a general idea. In that case, having expanding menus will make their search for the right product that much faster – and effective. If your store has over 100 products or at least one level of hierarchical categories underneath your top level categories, then considering this add-on feature would be highly recommended.

If you would like to see a few examples of Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Stores with Cascading Menu’s installed, here are a few to enjoy:

Left Side Navigation Examples:
http://diethighprotein.com/
http://alarmresource.com/
http://store.organicdivas.com/

Top Navigation Examples:
http://www.candlesandsuch.com/
http://www.popdeluxe.net/
http://www.coffeecakes.com

If you would like to learn more about our Cascading Menu’s for Yahoo Stores, please visit:
http://www.coloradowebsolutions.com/rtml-cascading-menus.html

Have a great week everyone.

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How to Import Yahoo Store Customers to Constant Contact

Posted on June 25th, 2010 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

The majority of our clients are using the Constant Contact email service for their stores, and one of the most common questions we receive is “How do I import my Yahoo Store Customers into Constant Contact?” It’s a great question, and one that we would love to answer for you.

First of all, something to consider – I highly suggest that you keep your paying customers and your email list members in individual groups. For example, I would suggest a GLOBAL mailing list for everyone that is on ANY of your mailing lists and then I would suggest adding a new mailing list called “Yahoo Store Customers” or something like that to import your paying customer info into. These customers are extremely important to you and should be kept in their own list as well as in the global list.

We have created an online video training tutorial about how to import your Yahoo Store customers into Constant Contact as well if you would prefer to watch and listen vs read these simple instructions. The written instructions are directly below the video presentation. Here is the training video on how to import your Yahoo Store Customer Data into your Constant Contact Account:

VIDEO: How to Import from Yahoo Store to Constant Contact

In order to perform these steps you will need to be able to log into your Yahoo Store and your Constant Contact Account. If you need to sign up for a Constant Contact account, please click here to start your free trial (will open in new window) and then you can come back here to import your customer data.

Step One: Exporting your Yahoo! Store’s Customer Data

• Log Into your Yahoo! Store’s Manager Section and click the ORDERS button
• In the SUMMARIZE section, enter the order number range you would like to export. It is not a problem at all to export customers that have already been imported to Constant Contact so you can export all of your orders, or, if you are keeping track, you can export the next batch of orders you want to export. Larger batches will take a little longer for Constant Contact to process, but it’s not a big deal at all.
• Once you’ve entered the order number range, click SUMMARIZE
• On the next page you will see a summary of the orders. At the very bottom of this page click EXPORT TO EXCEL.
• The next page will give you a list of downloads, please select the DOWNLOAD link next to ORDERS.csv.
• This will prompt you to save the file, I would suggest your desktop or someplace easy for you to find it.
• The export process is now complete.

Step Two: Editing the Data for Import

• This step is optional, but we highly suggest doing it to save time in the end.
• Open the file you just exported in either Excel, Numbers or even Google Docs.
• I’m going to suggest that you delete a bunch of the columns in the file so that you don’t have to tell Constant Contact to ignore all the unused columns. While this is not a required step, we do suggest that you edit your file to same enormous amounts of time while importing.
• Once the file is opened, delete the first few columns (order ID, Date, Numeric Time) so that your file’s first column is Ship Name. Continue to delete columns so that you are left with only Ship Name, Ship State, Ship Country and Email. Be sure to continue to scroll to the right of the spreadsheet, there are a lot of fields.
• Once you only have the few remaining fields, you can save the file (override the original) and close the window.
• The Editing Phase is now complete.

Step Three: Importing Into Constant Contact

• Now that we have the edited file ready to go, log into your Constant Contact Account (link).
• From the home page, click on CONTACTS in the top navigation bar.
• On the Contacts screen, click Add / Import under My Contacts
• The first screen will ask you to select the List(s) you would like to add your contacts to. If you have not yet set up any lists, you will see one list (General Interest) as the only option. As I mentioned before, I would highly suggest keeping a second list with only your Yahoo Store Customers on it, so let’s create a second list.
• If you want to create a new list, click CREATE A NEW LIST
• Enter the new Lists Name (for example: Yahoo Store Customers) and click SAVE
• You now see that your new list is check marked for you. If you would like to add these names to additional steps either check the lists you want to use or create additional lists.
• Once your Lists are selected, click NEXT
• On the “How would you like to add your list” page, select IMPORT CONTACTS FROM A FILE and click NEXT
• On the next screen, click BROWSE and find the file you downloaded and/or edited in excel. It might be called Orders.csv if you didn’t change it.
• Click SUBMIT DATA
• You may see a few warnings and confirmations. Read through those and accept terms, etc.
• The next screen will present you with a selection of your data and ask you to map it to the Constant Contact fields. This is the part that makes you glad you edited the file in excel before importing…
• You will see a drop down menu above each column asking you to either “Select Label” or guessing for you. Select the correct items for Name (we suggest using First Name since Constant Contact does not support Full name), State and Country. Email may already be detected for you, but if not, be sure to specify the email column as well.
• Once you have mapped your fields, click START IMPORT
• The entire process is now complete.

We go into more details and explanations as to “why” on the video if you would like to get some more information. The steps are exactly the same as above. If you have any questions about this process, let us know.

We have a Free Constant Contact Templates Program as well! If you are interested in learning more, please visit:
http://www.coloradowebsolutions.com/contact-email-free-template.html

We offer a number of additional Constant Contact services that are described in detail on our website at:
http://www.coloradowebsolutions.com/yahoo-store-email-marketing.html

Have a great day everyone.

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Thoughts on Yahoo Store Automatic Order Processing

Posted on June 24th, 2010 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Lately we’ve had a few clients interested in Yahoo’s automatic ordering processing. Each client has expressed concern that reviewing each order will end up being very time consuming. In all but one case we convinced the client that manual order review is the better way to go.

Yahoo does have the ability allow for automatic order processing. On the surface this seems like a no-brainer as this feature would dramatically cut down on the time spent managing your site. However on closer inspection, manually reviewing each order is time well spent.

The biggest drawback to auto-processing is the increased likelihood of receiving fraudulent orders. If you chose to use auto-processing, Yahoo’s Risk Tools can’t be applied. The Risk Tools module is invaluable as it will allow you to configure various rules which will verify AVS and CVV rules for each transaction. Sure, you’ll need to review each order manually as a result, however you’ll likely end up saving yourself money and inventory.

For a number of years I ran a fairly successful Yahoo store. We did have Risk Tools enabled and the result was on a weekly basis we stopped fraudulent orders from shipping. The fraudulent orders came in many different formats; some with correct addresses, but incorrect cards. Others would have the correct card and address but the CVV wouldn’t match.

We always had a dedicated customer service representative contact the appropriate bank in all such cases and saved ourselves thousands of dollars as a result. In your case, you might not have a CS representative to do the checking for you, but you’ll be glad when you’ve stopped an order that could cost you hundreds of dollars in lost merchandise.

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Use Google Alerts to help understand your Yahoo! Store

Posted on June 22nd, 2010 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

If you’re not using Google Alerts yet – you should be.

Google Alerts is a content monitoring service offered by Google. If you’re a Yahoo store owner – this service can be invaluable for keeping track of your competitors, your site’s performance and any related content that you feel would be helpful in tracking your products and your industry. Track product lines, track your competitions newest pages that have been indexed, and follow your own indexing. If you are actively blogging – Google Alerts can also be a great way to determine how quickly your posts are being picked up by google and indexed. Once you’ve signed up and selected  your various alert matches and preferences, you’ll be notified automatically, once a day or once a week if those terms are served via web content, blogs or video’s.

Currently the following alert types are available:

• Comprehensive
• News
• Web
• Blogs
• Video
• Groups

It’s very easy to sign up. Here’s what you’ll do:

Be sure you are logged into your google account. Head to: http://www.google.com/alerts . You will see a text box where you can enter various terms you’re interested in. You’ll then need to enter in the following:

Search Terms
Type of Alert you Want
When you would like to be Alerted (Daily, Weekly or Automatically)
Your Email Address

To start off with we would suggest the following search:

Search term: YourDomainName.com (change it to your Yahoo Stores domain)
Type: Everything
How Often: As It Happens
Number: Up to you
Email: Up to you

This will provide you with an email every single time google indexes a new page within your site. An invaluable resource to understand and see.

Once you’ve completed those steps you’re finished. You can set up as many alerts as like. Get Creative, you can always delete them if the content isn’t what you were expecting. It’s worth the time and effort to track terms related to your industry. Knowing is half the battle and Google Alerts is a great step in gathering detailed information pertaining directly to your site and products.

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Special Pricing on the New Yahoo Store Floating Cart

Posted on April 12th, 2010 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

UPDATE ON FLOATING CART INSTALLS: We have recently discovered upon installing quite a few of the Floating Carts, that the technology is incredibly buggy and needs improvement from Yahoo! While we still feel that the Floating Cart is a very beneficial tool to use, we are advising all clients to wait to install the Floating Carts until Yahoo! can get the scripts fixed and tested more thoroughly. We are still accepting Pre-orders and will still be honoring our sale pricing, but at this point the floating cart installations have been put on hold. We will update the blog when we resume installations again.

Hi Everyone!

As you’ve probably seen in the last week, Yahoo! Store has released one of their most significant upgrades in the last few years, the new Floating Cart. We’ve been hard at work learning how to use and implement this new technology and we are pleased to announce today a special price on both the basic installation and advanced installation for the entire month of April.

Basic Installation: $200 – During April $125
Advanced Installation: $325 – During April $250

Save $75 on either installation during April!

Ready to get it installed? Fill out this form and we will get you set up quickly!

What is the Basic Installation of the Floating Cart?

The basic installation of the new Yahoo! Store floating cart will be added directly above your site’s wrapper in the top right corner. We will customize the colors to match your site perfectly and assist you in setting up the options and features.

How much does the Basic Floating Cart Installation Cost?

The basic Installation will be priced at $200 starting in May, but for the entire month of April, we are offering a $75 early bird discount bringing the total cost to only $125!

[Sign Up Now]

What if I want my floating cart integrated directly into my site?

We are also offering an Advanced Installation of the Floating Cart that will integrate the floating cart directly into your site. An example of advanced integration would be replacing the “My Shopping Cart” link within your stores design with the new floating cart.

How much does the Advanced Floating Cart Installation Cost?

The advanced Installation will be priced at $325 starting in May, but for the entire month of April, we are offering a $75 early bird discount bringing the total cost to only $250!

[Sign Up Now]

We are very excited about this new technology from Yahoo! Merchant Solutions and we are ready to install it on your site! If you are not familiar with the new Floating Cart yet, Yahoo! has posted a detailed blog post about it here.

As always, if you have any questions, please let us know! We are here to help.

Remember, this special pricing is only valid during the month of April, so don’t delay!

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Colorado Web Solutions launches Yahoo Store Image Peeler

Posted on April 8th, 2010 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Colorado Web Solutions is pleased to announce the release of our newest service, the Yahoo! Store Image Peeler. If you’d like to read the details of this service, we’ve got it all outlined here.

To give you a quick summary, our Image Peeler service is designed to go into your Yahoo! Store, download every single product image active in your store, rename them with the correct formatting (Item ID Code based for CSV uploads) and then deliver a single zipped file straight to your inbox. The service costs $225 and is typically delivered within 24 business hours.

The Image Peeler is perfect for stores that are switching from Manual Item Additions to a CSV upload, for merchants who want to edit all of their product images in bulk, for store owners who want to keep a backup of all of their product images, for merchants opening a second (or third!) Yahoo! Store and even for merchants looking to expand their store to additional platforms. Any of these scenarios would traditionally require hours and hours of work for merchants, but with the introduction of the Colorado Web Solutions Image Peeler, it’s all automatic and perfect each time. Could be the best $225 you spend on your store this year.

If you have any questions about the Yahoo! Store Image Peeler or if you would like to sign up for an Image Peel, please let us know. We’re here to help.

Have a great Thursday everyone.

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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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Yahoo! Store Blog’s Finally Get Upgraded

Posted on August 11th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

This morning I received an email from Yahoo! Merchant Solutions that made me very happy. Finally the Yahoo! Store blog platform (WordPress) is getting updated to the newest platform (2.8). We have been working with the new platform for quite a while now and we are extremely impressed with it. Blogging has never been easier and WordPress is the best option for Yahoo! Store owners who are ready to start blogging. If you need any help setting up your blog, we do offer a variety of solutions (Basic & Advanced), so feel free to contact us for a quote.

Here is a copy of the email that came from Yahoo! Small Business regarding the WordPress Blog Upgrade.

Important: We will soon upgrade your WordPress blog.

Dear Yahoo! Small Business customer,

We are writing to inform you of a critical issue related to the WordPress blog(s) you activated in your account using the tools in your Web Hosting Control Panel.

We have become aware of security vulnerabilities in WordPress version 2.0.2. To prevent hackers from exploiting these vulnerabilities and potentially damaging your blog or web site, we will soon upgrade all Yahoo! Small Business WordPress blogs running version 2.0.2 to the more secure version 2.8.

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