Yahoo Store Shopping Cart Review

The Internet supersite (or as it refers to itself, “homepage”) Yahoo!, provides Yahoo! Store as a platform for merchants to sell items on the World Wide Web.

Yahoo! sets up store guidelines consistent with other services provided under the Yahoo! Umbrella, and those guidelines are quite extensive. These general merchant services are provided through access of its Small Business page.

Functionality and Features

Yahoo! Store Demo or Free-Trial Experience

A free trial does not appear to be available.

The top tab, Products on the Yahoo! Small Business page provides clickable “View Demo” that runs and shows the various decisions you can make as a small business in setting up a) your site, b) your shopping cart, and c) other items.

You may also click on “hire a developer”, which opens up to a wide assortment of categories, where you may contact third parties for specific needs.

Other tabs expand to basically identify the Yahoo! services rendered. There is a button on the main Yahoo! Small Business page that let’s you sign up for a “Merchant Starter Plan” for $39.95 per month. Clicking on the Sign Up button takes you to a screen where, first, Yahoo! tries to sell you a domain name. (!)

Personally I found the intro pages completely baffling… though it is extremely easy, before understanding anything, to send Yahoo! $39.95 per month!

And if you have trouble making the transaction, ordering-assistance is provided via a toll-free telephone number.

General Observations

The question that immediately springs to mind is what, exactly, is Yahoo! Store? Is it a shopping cart, a Web hosting program, search-engine marketing tool, business messaging facility, what?

Well, clearly Yahoo! Store wants to be the whole enchilada [question to Gary and Josh: do we want to be colloquial and write for some entertainment value?] for your Web site business.

(What’s that saying about “trying to be all things to all people”… and winding up not pleasing anyone?) The main focus of the Yahoo! Store “suite” is smaller merchants.

A corporate program is available, and when you click on the Yahoo! Small Business page tab for Corporate Program, up pops a screen inviting you to request a consultation.

 In other words, if you’re a “big boy” (more than $300,000 in annual online sales or more than $5 million annual offline sales), Yahoo! probably doesn’t have anything standard to meet your needs.

Finally, if you choose Yahoo! Store as your solution, be prepared to be incorporated into the Yahoo! way of doing things right down to the orders for brass tacks.

Limitations

In our research we determined that Yahoo! Store—sometimes referred to as Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, sometimes referred to as Yahoo! Small Business—has the following limitations:

• Full time customer support
• McAfee Security not included
• No dashboard
• 20 GB storage limit
• Customizable only with RTML

Further Yahoo! provides no free trial. The limitations are apparent from the gitgo, simply as you follow along in the Yahoo! Web interface.

Support and Documentation

Technical support is available 24/7 according to the link for Yahoo! Store that first comes up on Google. But when you click your way through to the E-commerce tab, nothing shows up indicating the support plans available. Perhaps the Yahoo! Store 24/7 support is the same as the Yahoo! Store 24/7 order line?

Nothing exists for Yahoo! Store in the way of documentation… at least nothing that’s readily apparent from accessing the Yahoo! site.

 On most of the pages for Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, you will see a PDF file that you may click on. This is a five-page high-level listing of what you get with Yahoo! Store, but describes nothing in how you go about actually getting it.

Conclusion

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

(And that’s only because we’ve never seen a 1 star) Bad implementation. Rather, if Yahoo! Store is a good implementation, you’re going to have to invest a lot of time, money, and effort to find out.

If you want a multifeatured, highly demonstrated, Top-Rated (5-star)
e-Commerce Solution, check out Premium Web Cart. Premium Web Cart offers a fully integrated e-commerce package—built on the latest Web technologies—that focuses on the rapid, integrated growth of your enterprise.

Best Wishes,