Sunday, June 12, 2011

Choosing A Yahoo Merchant Package (Yahoo Store)

By: Russell Blanc

So you have your business plan completed and the tools and location are in place to create and operate your small business. Now it is time to see which Yahoo Store package can accommodate your needs when building an online store. It is time to choose a Yahoo Merchant package.

Yahoo Merchant Solutions is Yahoo's e-commerce solution for building and managing your online storefront. The packages include a free domain name, email, web hosting, shopping cart, online credit card processing, inventory management and catalog management. Depending on your immediate needs, Yahoo Merchant solutions offers three packages to get you going.

Yahoo Merchant Plans

The three packages are called Starter, Standard and Professional. Upgrading plans is extremely easy so you can always upgrade later as your business grows. Most people and businesses will probably start off with the Starter plan and immediately take advantage of the many options that the Yahoo Merchant plan offers.

An Important Recent Upgrade

Another great reason to choose the Yahoo Starter Merchant plan is that Yahoo recently upgraded this plan so that there is now unlimited bandwidth and disk space for the web hosting features of this plan. So now you can handle more visitors and never have to worry about running out of file space on the server. The improved Yahoo Merchant Starter makes opening a successful online store even easier. Also, this plan comes with free tools to help you easily design a unique yahoo store and add products. Also added is a $100 credit with Yahoo Search Marketing to attract more customers and free store setup advice from a selection of e-commerce experts. The setup fee is waived and you save 25% on your monthly fees for the first two months as well.

Learn more about the Yahoo Merchant Starter plan at http://www.website-hostingco.com/YahooMerchant.asp

Choosing a Yahoo Store package will depend on your business model, cost of web hosting and the features you would like to utilize. The many Yahoo solutions offer a number of features that will make your online storefront easy and efficient. Features such as:

- Order Processing with credit cards
- Free Domain Name
- Catalog and Inventory Management
- Customer Support
- Security
- Email
- and much more...

Yahoo Merchant Solutions has plenty of features to build, manage and market your website and yahoo online store. View an updated comparison chart of Yahoo stores. But remember that upgrading as your business grows is easy and might be your best strategy. Upgrade later as your business expands.

The price ranges from $39.95 to $299.95 with the setup being waived and a 25% discount on your monthly fees for the first two months. Also, there is a transaction fee which differs based on your plan.

Once you choose a merchant package, you have to build your online store. Yahoo has 2 different tools for hosting and building your store: Store Editor and Yahoo Web Hosting. If you are new to building a web page and do not know html, and want to create a Yahoo store as quickly as possible, the store editor may be the way to go. You fill out a few forms and upload your images via a browser and the store editor will create your product pages for you. If you know HTML and want to use a third-party software such as Dreamweaver, building your store with the web hosting component might suit you best.

Either way, Yahoo Merchant Solutions has a variety of features to create, manage and market your website and yahoo online store.