The New Merchant Solutions Developer Directory

Some of you may have seen the new Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Developer Directory. Yes, it is now the “Developer Directory” and not the “Designer Directory.” As many more of our designers have branched out to provide custom applications, systems integration, and business consulting, among other services, it was time to change the name.

You’ll notice immediately that the new site allows you to sort developers based on a few different criteria. You are no longer limited to the default listing or sort by location. You can also search by any one of our specialty areas. This is intended to save you time by matching you to the right developer based on your needs. Developers have been reviewed by Yahoo! and listed in the following categories based on specialty:

• Custom Applications: Shopping feeders, order managers, CRM, advanced search and more.
• Education & Training: Training seminars, RTML training, books and other resources.
• RTML Programming: RTML add-ons (such as breadcrumbs) and advanced template development for the Store Editor.
• Systems Integration: 3rd party application integrations such as CRM, accounting, inventory, backoffice and more.
• Web Design: Graphic design, visual development, page layouts, custom CSS and more.
• Campaign Management: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) bid management, marketing campaign management and more.
• Organic SEO: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services for organic search listings (not paid advertisement).

But why do I need a developer?

Good question. Although all the tools are available to you out the box, it does take some time to develop a highly customized store. The amount of time it takes varies greatly depending on your experience level While the base template that Yahoo! provides is enough to get you started online, developers really help you compete with larger online stores by adding features typically found only on high-end ecommerce sites. A highly customized store can highlight your products or services in a way that will create a compelling shopping experience for your shoppers helping you to increase sales and conversion

A recent article at Ecommerce Guide gives some examples of the type of work that Yahoo! Merchant Solutions developers provide, from adding breadcrumbs to rebuilding your templates to search engine optimization. According to the article, you may be surprised to learn that some projects start for as little as $350. The costs for some advanced features are easily justified when considering the incremental revenue that the features may generate. Developers may be able to provide some rough estimates of the average return on investment for some of these features.

Yahoo! provides this list of developers as a courtesy to our merchants. If your organization develops eCommerce websites using the Yahoo! Merchant Solutions platform and would like to be listed, please visit “How to Participate” page for more information. Yahoo!® provides this list of Developers as a courtesy. Yahoo!® does not endorse or guarantee the performance of these developers, and disclaims all related liability. Yahoo!® does not provide or endorse any “Authorized Developer” program.

Randy Yim & Michael Ober
Yahoo! Small Business

Does your funnel have holes?

Merchants that have been around a while may be familiar with the metaphor, but if you are new merchant, you should consider your checkout pages as a funnel—wide at the top representing all of the visitors that see a shopping cart page, and thinner at the bottom representing visitors that have completed an order. Potential buyers leave at each step in checkout either because they don’t have the information needed to proceed to the next step, or the process to complete a purchase is too long, too complex, or asks for information they are not willing to provide. (It’s true that some buyers may never intend to check out and are only comparison shopping, but you can’t do much about them besides cutting prices or offering discount or free shipping.)

With this in mind, each change you make to your checkout pages should be aimed at plugging holes in the funnel (providing information where necessary and providing reassurances of privacy) and greasing the funnel (reducing the number of steps and fields to a minimum) to make it quick.

I’ve been meaning to post a link to an interview that James Maguire did with usability guru Jakob Nielsen about design guidelines for checkout usability. With Checkout Manager out of beta, you can put these tips into practice in your checkout pages. While I recommend reading the full interview to get tips that are normally reserved for enterprise-level ecommerce sites, I’ll provide a brief list of some of the areas covered:

• How much information to ask buyers in checkout?
• Adding shipping calculators and coupon fields to the shopping cart to let buyers know final costs as early as possible.
• The importance of a prominent “return to shopping” link.
• Validating input and providing error messages.
• How many steps should your checkout process have?

With Checkout Manager, you can easily customize or add fields, control the number of pages in your checkout flow, customize the look of any button, and add a shipping calculator and coupon field to your shopping cart.

The tips discussed in the interview will help you identify any “holes” you may have in your checkout pages and also how to provide the shortest path between your shopping cart and a completed order.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

No Beta, Mo’ Better

We are happy to announce the general release of Checkout Manager. With this release, we have resolved the major known issues. For a list of resolved issues, please check out our release notes. Thanks to all of the merchants who participated in the beta release and helped identify issues.

This release of Checkout Manager also includes a few new features:

• Customize PayPal payment pages directly in Checkout Manager
• Ability to customize field labels and display of fields on the Order Review, Order Confirmation and Order Status pages
• Set a minimum order value
• Set a maximum order value

New merchants will have Checkout Manager by default. Merchants using the version 1 or version 2 checkout flows (also called the old and new checkout) are encouraged to test their custom checkout pages and enable Checkout Manager when ready.

Merchants can also take advantage of the PayPal Express Checkout integration in Checkout Manager to provide buyers with the option of using PayPal as a payment method. Checkout Manager now allows you to even customize the header image, and header and page background color  of PayPal payment pages.

The best part for all merchants is that Checkout Manager makes it easy to make changes and offers almost total control over elements in your checkout pages. Merchants can easily push out changes to test their impact on increasing conversion rates.

Keep in mind that it may be easier to convert your existing visitors into buyers than to attract more qualified visitors.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

Ways to Reduce Cart Abandonment with Checkout Manager
(Part Two)

In the previous post we looked at some ways to reduce cart abandonment. Here are some more tips to keep buyers moving through your checkout process with special emphasis on many of the features of Checkout Manager that address cart abandonment reasons.

• Problem: Buyers may not purchase for fear of a better deal being found.
  Solutions:
  • If your store offers a low-price guarantee (or a price match guarantee) state this in your checkout process. Some users may be comparison shopping and knowing that you will match or beat any advertised price may convince them to shop with your store over another.
  • Offer short-term or seasonal specials such as free shipping to encourage purchases. Offer coupons or discounts to lure shoppers into buying an item.
• Problem: Buyers may get lost if you don’t limit options and provide a clear path.
  Solutions:
  • Provide a consistent indicator of the buyer’s progress in the checkout process. Checkout Manager allows you to create customized progress indicators, even uploading images. Custom graphics can show the buyer where they are in the process, and how many steps are left.
  • Ensure buyers know how to get to the next step by using prominent buttons in checkout. With Checkout Manager, merchants can use custom CSS buttons in a contrasting color of their choice so the checkout, continue and place order buttons stand out. Merchants can even upload custom buttons.
  • Use page views and click trails to study how buyers interact with your site. Are visitors browsing but not buying? This may indicate you do not have enough information on product pages to make a purchase decision. Are visitors getting to the shopping cart but abandoning orders? This may indicate they lack critical information to convince them to complete the order. Better still, each time a customer calls, try and listen for problems they may have had in your cart. If they say that they started to purchase but didn’t for some reason or another, try and address that concern.

Figure 1: Two-page order process. Note that the Order Review page can also be hidden to create a one-page checkout.

• Problem: Buyers may abandon orders that take too long to complete.
  Solutions:
  • Reduce the number of pages in your checkout process. With Checkout Manager you can choose to combine shipping and billing on one page, hide the Order Review page, or even have a one-page checkout process. Merchant can quickly reconfigure and test new checkout flows to see which flow results in a higher number of completed orders.
  • Consider carefully adding any additional fields in checkout that may prolong checkout unnecessarily.

Remember: Don’t abandon design when it comes to your checkout pages—design to reduce abandonment.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business