E-commerce, design, & more by Yahoo Store Designer, Rob Snell. Visit his website for more information... Web store maintenance by Snell Brothers + YSTORE. Need answers to Yahoo Store design and maintenance questions? I'm on my eighth year of working on the Yahoo Store and Merchant Solutions platform. In April of 1997, I built my first Yahoo Store. Since then I've seen hundreds of stores, talked with the creators and engineers behind the Yahoo software, and have seen the inner workings of 400+ e-commerce based small businesses using Merchant Solutions & Yahoo Store.

Yahoo! Store Book Introduction (4 pg)

About This Yahoo Store Book (.5)

Conventions Used in This Book (1/4)

What You�re Not to Read (1/4)

Foolish Assumptions (1/4)

How this Book is Organized (2)

Part I: Finding Out about Yahoo! Store

Part II: Planning What�s In Store

Part III: Building, Stocking, and Opening Your Store

Part IV: Minding the Store from Your Virtual Back Office

Part V: Profiting from Internet Marketing

Part VI: Making More Money with Your Yahoo! Store

Part VII: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book (.5)

Where to Go from Here (1/4)

Part I: Finding Out about Yahoo! Store

Chapter 1: The Nickel Tour of Yahoo! Store

Discovering Yahoo! Store

Exploring Yahoo! Store features and benefits

Benefiting from Yahoo�s size

Revealing million dollar Yahoo! merchants

What makes a good Yahoo! Store

Writing Your Yahoo! Store E-Commerce Success Story

SIDEBAR: �Commerce� part is harder than the �E� part�

Using Yahoo! Tools

Exploring store-building options

Running your store with daily maintenance tools

Yahoo! Store Manager tools

Yahoo! Business E-mail

Benchmarking store performance with stats and graphs

� about statistics, references, and track links

Minding Your Yahoo! Store

Processing orders and shipping boxes

Stocking and restocking the virtual shelves

Marketing Your Yahoo! Store

Buying PPC ads to get customers today

Getting free traffic from search engines

Discovering other ways to drive traffic to the store

Improving Your Yahoo! Store

Driving more qualified traffic to your store

Converting browsers into buyers more often

Acquiring customers and keeping them for life

Expanding your product lines and profits

Minding your overhead so that you don�t go under

Chapter 2: Planning Your Yahoo! Store

Choosing a Business Model that Works on the Web

Building on proven business models

Picking products that sell on the Web

Finding popular and profitable niches

Promoting products with limited distribution

Retailing quality products and adding value

Selling products that encourage repeat orders

Maximizing your margins and price points

Examining Types of Yahoo! Stores

Building a brand-new retailing business from scratch

Leveraging your knowledge and passion

Planning your business model on a napkin

�quick-building a prototype store that works focused around a small group of related products

Using drop-shippers for fun, profit, and market research

Taking an existing business online

Researching your industry online

Creaming your most profitable products

Leveraging existing inventory to the Web

Maximizing supplier relationships

�use your real world status to get digital assets from your suppliers

Selling locally while shipping globally

Migrating to Yahoo! Store from another storefront system

Noting differences between Yahoo! and other storefronts

Preparing your products

Copying your look and feel

Preserving search engine rankings

Opening multiple Yahoo! Stores

Targeting different markets with different stores

Duplicating online success without spamming

Chapter 3: Jump-Starting Your Yahoo! Store

Mastering Domains

Domains, registrars, DNS, and so on

Domain do�s and don�ts

Switching registrars

Parking multiple domains

Virtual this and that

Choosing a new domain

Using domain research tools

Marketing thoughts about domains

Using multiple domains

Registrars and you

Using an existing domain

Setting your DNS

�Whois� that sending me junkmail?

Watch where you point that thing

Opening Your Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Account

Deciding on a Merchants Solutions package

Starter (Start cheap, upgrade later)

Standard

Professional

Creating your Yahoo! ID, password, and security key

Applying for merchant accounts for credit cards

Jumping into Store Building

Basic training for the Yahoo! Store Editor

Configure your Store Editor for store building

Log in and navigate the tools

Create a sample section

Create three sample items

Use the Clipboard to move things around

Add Specials to your home page

Upload some quick pictures

Publish your site, and you�re live on the Web

Store Manager set up

Set sales tax rates

Configure shipping methods and rates

Create order confirmation page and e-mail

Turn on merchant order notification fax and e-mails

Publish store changes

Place a test order

Chapter 4: Complete Anatomy of a Yahoo! Store

Buyer's Eye View of Yahoo! Store Order #12134

Overview of what an online shopper sees from the first time they visit your store including all of the public elements of a Yahoo! Store. Includes:

HOME page

SECTION page

PRODUCT page

Store SEARCH

SHOPPING CART

Secure CHECKOUT

Confirmation page

Confirmation e-mail

Order status e-mail

Tracking number e-mail.

Merchant's Perspective of a Yahoo! Store Order #12134

Shows all the elements a Merchant uses to process orders. Includes:

Merchant order notification e-mail

Merchant order notification fax

Order #12134 in the Manager

Click trail of order #12134

Reference showing converting keyword, source, and entry page

Credit-card processing

Daily Care and Feeding of a Yahoo! Store

Covers day-to-day operations of a mid-sized Yahoo! Store

Part II: Planning What�s In a Yahoo! Store

Chapter 5: Preparing to Build Your Yahoo! Store

Selecting Yahoo! Store Building Tools

Choosing Store Editor or Store Tags

Using Merchant Solution�s Store Tags

Prepping Products for Production

Product databases

Product images

Doing It Yourself or Outsourcing Design

Comparing DIY and PAY

Building a store to get the feel of it

SIDEBAR: Working with store designers

Chapter 6: Designing Your Yahoo! Store to Turn Shoppers into Buyers

Designing Your Store�s Look and Feel

Being inspired by the best stores

SIDEBAR: Designing a store for your intended audience

� using Craig�s �magazine� concept which is to design the store to look like the magazine the shopper would buy

Choosing colors, fonts, logos, photos, and layouts

Mocking up your store design on paper

Creating Effective Internal Store Navigation

Browsing leads to buying

You are here: Using navigational elements

Navigation bars

Headers

Breadcrumbs

Tabs and buttons

Text link navigation

Sitemaps Shopping by searching your store

Optimizing your store search results

Using the <!�NOSEARCH -- > tag

Pimping out your NSEARCH template

Adding SEARCH functionality to every page

Designing Types of Store Pages

Designing a professional home page

Building informative section pages

Creating a killer product page Making shopping cart and checkout pages

Tweaking your internal store search results pages

Chapter 7: Yahoo: Selling with Words and Pictures

Writing Copy that Converts Shopper into Buyers

Copywriting to sell on the Web

Writing great product names and descriptions

Crafting more content for shoppers and search engines

Buyers� guides

Product reviews

Comparison charts

Customer comments

FAQs, order information and utility pages

Looking to Images to Sell More Stuff

Producing professional product pictures

Creating images for Web stores

Understanding thumbnails and icons

Protecting your product photography

Creating killer graphics to increase store sales

Store branding

Product photography

Section header graphics

Icons and navigation elements

Manufacturer and third-party logos

Internal banners and featured products

SIDEBAR: Addicted to images �

�some over-designed stores suffer from load speed issues and search engine problems. Compare million-dollar a year guy lusting after the $50K store.

Chapter 8: Merchandising to Sell More with a Yahoo! Store

Merchandising your products by category

Shop by manufacturer or brand

Shop by product type

Shop by problem solved

Shop by type of customer

Other categories to shop by

�price, best-sellers, author, etc., new products

SIDEBAR: Organizing categories for shoppers and for search engines

� building theme pyramids and theme silos. It�s not just a good way to organize your products for shopper, it�s also a good way to organize your products for search engines�blahblahblah

Featuring products across the site

Maximize your home page real estate

Push best-selling products on section pages

Cross-selling and up-selling to increase your average order

Finding $30,000 in sales using cross-sell

Creating and uploading cross-sell items

Part III: Building, Stocking, and Opening Your Store

Chapter 9: Creating Products in Editor and Catalog Manager

Making Products and Sections in the Editor

Creating new products and sections in Regular mode

Using Advanced mode for more control

�creating new OBJECTS on the CONTENTS page

Introducing the Catalog Manager

All about the Catalog Manager

�product data only, no path info

Adding a product in the Catalog Manager

Publishing changes in your store catalog

�doesn�t PUBLISH your EDITOR changes

Creating custom tables, fields

TECHNICAL STUFF: Custom tables, fields, and types

�explains the differences between legacy TYPES and custom TABLES. Also covers the PRODUCT-URL, Y!Shopping/Product Submit fields

Saving Time with Product Data Uploads

Yahoo�s format for database uploads

Uploads to Store Editor

Uploads to Catalog Manager

Converting vendor databases into uploadable files

Exporting and importing product and other data

Managing product databases with load files

Uploading Product Photos in Bulk

Managing product images and other images

Discovering other ways to upload images and product data

�the FTP shopping.yahoo.com trick

Using third-party tools to upload and download images

Chapter 10: Store-Building with Yahoo! Store Editor

Peeking Under the Hood of the Yahoo! Store Editor

Controlling your store�s look and feel with variables

Utilizing advanced editor features

Comparing Three Designs for Basic Yahoo! Stores

Top buttons design

Side buttons design

Table-wrap trick

Introducing RTML Templates, Types, and Objects

Discovering RTML

Exploring what you can do with RTML

Revealing RTML resources

Chapter 11: Store-Building with HTML and Store Tags

Introducing Store Tags from Merchant Solutions

Choosing Store Tags and Web Hosting

Creating Store Tags using the Store Tags Wizard

Placing Store Tags in your HTML pages

The Options tag inside the Form tags

Using the File Manager to Edit HTML

FTPing your files to your HOSTING account

Store Tags Tips and Tricks

Chapter 12: Opening Your New Yahoo! Store

Completing the Open for Business Checklist

Creating About Us and Shipping Info pages

Writing your privacy policy

Testing the Back-End

Configuring shipping methods

Setting shipping rates

Setting sales tax

Integrating credit-card merchant accounts

Completing the Final Walk-Through

Opening for Business and Receiving Your First Order

Part IV: Minding the Store from Your Virtual Back Office

Chapter 13: Mastering the Yahoo! Store Manager

Processing Orders

Doing it manually

Exporting orders

Using third-party tools with orders

Introducing Stats, Graphs, and Reports

Configuring order settings and site settings

Using the Yahoo! Store Promotions Panel

Powering up promotional tools

Cross-sell

Create links and track links

Coupon Manager

Mailing lists

XML export

Paying for promotion

E-mail marketing

Yahoo! Directory

Yahoo! Shopping

Affiliate program

Chapter 14: Managing Yahoo Store Customers, Orders, and Products

Managing Customers (and Expectations)

Using the Order Confirmation page

Using the Order Status page

Changing Order Status with XML uploads

Managing Online Products

Dealing with out of stock products

Using real time inventory (or not!)

Maintaining Your Real Physical Inventory

Picking, Packing, and Shipping Orders

Managing Credit-Card Orders and Merchant Accounts

Chapter 15: Running Your Business by the Numbers

Introducing Yahoo! Store Stats, Reports, Graphs, and Sales

�you can see EDITOR-built pages, all carts, but can�t see hosting page views or other HOSTING statistics

Drawing Conclusions by Analyzing Graphs

Separating the buyers from the browsers

Looking at an old store�s graphs

Customers (last 365 days)

Revenue (last 365 days)

Orders/customer (last 90 days)

Revenue/customer (last 90 days)

Looking at a new store�s graphs

Customers (last 365 days)

Revenue (last 365 days)

Orders/customer (last 90 days)

Revenue/customer (last 90 days)

Discovering time is not on your side

Yahoo! only keeps last 180-365 days worth of some stats

�includes REF, SALES, daily REPORTS, CLICK TRAILS

Reducing Cart Abandonment through Click Trails

Checking References for Traffic and Sales

Looking through Log Files from Yahoo! Hosting

Powering Up Other Third-Party Stats

�Indextools example of more converting keywords

Part V: Profiting from Internet Marketing

Chapter 16: Internet Marketing Basics

Turning Keywords into Cash

Introducing keywords

Seeing how shoppers search

Searching for the most popular keywords

Collecting converting keywords

Revving Up Your Search Engine Marketing

Directing free traffic from the search engines

�All about SEO - �Free� Traffic

Buying search engine traffic through PPC ads

�SEM - Paid Search

Opting into online malls and shopping engines

Yahoo! Shopping Yahoo! Product Submit)

Froogle (Google�s version of Yahoo! Shopping)

Shopping search tips and tricks

Discovering Myriad Other Ways to Market Online

Buying text link ads for traffic and link popularity

Sponsoring forums, directories, nonprofits, and clubs

Turning on offline marketing

Spreading the virus through word of mouth and referral marketing

Commissioning sales through affiliate marketing

Chapter 17: Discovering Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Introducing Search Engine Optimization for Yahoo! Stores

Why search engine optimization can help your business

Search engines are important sources of traffic

Opportunity cost of SEO

Which search engines are important

Google

Yahoo!

MSN

Why your Yahoo! Store is already SEO friendly

The regular templates generate static html which is better than dynamic or database-driven sites

Both section and product pages have good content, page names, and links

It�s easy to replace duplicate content from supplier data feeds with your own copy

Introducing Basic SEO Strategies

Search engines crawl and index text

What �text� is

Seeing what a search engine spider sees

Why content is important

Search engines count and follow links

Introducing hyperlinks and anchor text

What others say about you is important

Getting links and giving links

Search engines uncover and delete spam

Knowing what spam is

Keeping your nose clean

Avoiding search engine snake oil salesman

Chapter 19: Introducing Pay-Per-Click for Yahoo Stores

Introducing Pay-Per-Click Advertising

TABLE: The Ups and Downs of PPC

Discovering how pay-per-click ads work

Choosing keywords

Picking matching types

Setting bids and keeping budgets

Introducing PPC ad elements

Headline/title

Description

URL/landing URL

Choosing syndication and distribution options

Networks - Only 2 really count: Overture and Google

Search partners

Content partners

Geographic distribution

SB A brief history of PPC

Planning Your PPC Ad Campaign

Setting your store's PPC goals

Combining the one-two punch of SEO and PPC

Keying in on the Best Keywords

Starting with converting keywords

Buying keywords in bulk

Buying your company name

Eliminating words you don't want

Writing Effective PPC Ads

Prequalifying prospects with good ads

Crafting compelling titles

Writing effective descriptions

Designing a generic ad

SIDEBAR: Dynamic keyword insertion

Part VI: Making More Money with Your Yahoo! Store

Chapter 18: Optimizing Your Yahoo! Store for Search Engines

Optimizing Yahoo! Stores without Programming

Gathering your top 200 keywords

Using keywords in navigation links

Writing descriptive product names for title tags

Creating keyword-rich content in captions

Implementing Other SEO

Adding the missing tags from �PAGE.� templates

�how to add H1, Meta Keywords & Description, better titles, etc.

Making meta tags that matter

Monitoring Your Rankings with Third-Party Tools

Using position checkers to see how well you rank for specific keywords

Checking pages indexed in the engines

Counting your backlinks

Implementing Advanced SEO

Discovering what works for better search engine rankings

Counting back links to see what sites link to you

Reverse-engineering your competition�s SEO

Automating SEO through RTML

Using existing fields for SEO fields

Lazy Merchant�s SEO � using your name, caption, and abstract for your title, description, and keyword fields

SIDEBAR Implementing a better title tag

Using RTML to make more compelling titles

Add value-adds to the title (free shipping, money-back guarantees, your savings, special offers, free gifts, and so on