In the Spotlight

Use Search to Your Advantage According to BusinessWeek, the number of people arriving at web sites via search engines "nearly doubled in the last year, to 13%." These searchers represent highly qualified leads who have already demonstrated an interest in your product, simply by making a search query. It's not surprising then that paid search submissions are eclipsing banner ads as a more effective form of online advertising. Whether you choose a paid inclusion program or submit your site to a search engine, there are many steps you can take with Yahoo! to improve your search performance: To place your products in a leading searchable retail portal, opt-in to Yahoo! Shopping. To get more from your Yahoo! Shopping placement, use your Store Manager's Ypath field. (Explained in the next article, below.) To learn how to submit your store to search engines, sign in to your Store Manager, go to the Promote column, and click the "Search Engines" link. Submit your site to the Yahoo! Directory, if you haven't already. To be considered quickly, consider Yahoo! Express. To learn more about how to improve your search rankings, explore articles and web sites listed on Yahoo!'s search engine optimization page or visit SearchEngineWatch.com.

On the Network

Improve Your Visibility in Yahoo! Shopping There's a great tool to help you gain visibility in Yahoo! Shopping search results: the Ypath field. Located in your Store Editor, the Ypath field allows you to categorize your products so that they will be displayed appropriately in Yahoo! Shopping search results and in Yahoo! Shopping Product Guides. Yahoo! Shopping Product Guides consolidate detailed product information, buying advice, and price comparisons to help Yahoo! shoppers make informed purchasing decisions about computers, software, electronics, video games, books, music, and DVD/videos. These pages are highly popular destinations for Yahoo! Shopping users, and we've found that merchants who have mapped their products to Yahoo! Shopping Product Guides have increased their sales substantially (as much as 84%!). We highly recommend using the Ypath field to improve your revenue potential. To learn how to use Ypath to categorize your products into the correct Yahoo! Shopping departments and to map your products to the appropriate Product Guides, visit http://shopping.yahoo.com/ypath/index.html.

Feature Update

New Option for Your Order Form To give you more flexibility, we've made it possible to turn off the Customer Comments field on your store checkout page. The Customer Comments field offers a place to communicate special instructions or ask questions during the order process. In the past, while many merchants enjoyed offering this feature to their customers, merchants who used drop-shippers had a problem: Whenever a customer typed a message into the field, the order had to be processed separately, and delivery was delayed. Here's how to turn off the Comments field: Go to the "Order Form" link in your Store Manager. On the Order Form page, scroll down to the Billing Info section. You'll see the Disable Comments field, with a pull-down menu that says "Yes" or "No." To disable comments, choose "Yes." To keep comments, choose "No." (The default setting is "No," which keeps the comments field active on your checkout page.) Return to your Store Manager and click "Publish Order Settings" to make your change take effect. In most cases we recommend that you keep the Comments field enabled, as it offers an important communication channel between you and your customers. Demonstrating that you are responsive to customer feedback is a great way to establish loyalty and build a lasting business relationship.

Getting to Know You

Yahoo! Store Developers Forum Our Small Business team is constantly working to build features that help you succeed. We recently invited a group of Yahoo! Store developers to visit us and provide feedback on new product features and functionality. (To learn more about what's ahead, be sure to read the 2003 Feature Preview sent to all merchants in January.) Our guests reviewed a wide range of upcoming functionality and offered insights that will help us refine our plans. This special forum gave our product team loads of valuable insight, and we look forward to hosting more meetings like this in the future. Your opinion matters too. Please read on to learn about our new satisfaction survey, and please continue to send your suggestions to http://surveys.yahoo.com/stosuggestions.

What's Working for You

Participate in Our Satisfaction Survey and Enter to Win $1000 We'd like to invite you to participate in a survey to tell us what you think about current Yahoo! Store capabilities, customer care, pricing, and more. We'll use this information to help improve features and service levels. Plus, merchants who complete our survey can enter a sweepstakes to win $1,000. To enter, visit http://store.surveys.yahoo.com/storesatisfaction.

E-commerce on the Web

Links to Sites, Features, and Stories Marketing: 1+1+1 = The New Mass Market Today's marketers focus on tiny niche markets to discover the latest trends and gain market share. Learn how one company turned a fringe product into a nationwide success story. Seat of the Pants Do you need a business plan to succeed? A recent survey of Inc. 500 founders indicates that flexibility and quick thinking might be more important factors in business success. A Borrower Be "For the first time in decades, small businesses have a choice of lenders eager to start new relationships," according to Inc. magazine. Find out why big bankers think this is a "terrific time to be a small business."