Get Practical for Free

The fine folks over at Practical Ecommerce are offering Yahoo! merchants a free one-year subscription to their print magazine. Now if you aren’t already reading the online version of Practical Ecommerce, you are missing out on some great content. I think the SEO Report Card and Site Usability series are particularly useful to read.

While the online version will give you some quick tactical tips for your stores, the print version contains the in-depth articles and research that can help you determine your longer-term strategy.

Sign up for your trial subscription today.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

Solid Cactus Webinar: E-commerce Success for the New Year

Solid Cactus will hold a special webinar, 2008: E-Commerce Success for the New Year on Wednesday, January 16th at 2:00 p.m. EST. During this webinar, you will learn about:

• Ways to actively engage your customers, keep them coming back, and improve customer confidence.
• The top reasons for shopping cart abandonment and how to avoid them.
• New navigation tools to get your customers to the buy button faster.
• New ways to organize your product information so customers can find the
  information they’re looking for faster, leading to more conversions.

Register for the webinar.

Pimpin’ Your Products: Rob Snell’s PubCon ‘07 Presentation

Long-time Yahoo! merchant and marketing guru Rob Snell recently presented on a panel at PubCon 2007, the WebMasterWorld convention. He graciously provided a copy of his presentation in PDF format for other merchants to read. And while there is no audio, and therefore you’re missing out on all the great “Rob-isms” (and a huge helping of his Southern “gravy”), merchants can still glean the most important points from just viewing the slides.

Rob emphasizes the following:

• how to stand out from the crowd by providing original content for products in the form of videos, additional product images, and product guides.
• how to capitalize on new products entering the market by using any and all manufacturer content and your own to grab search share and press coverage.
• how to increase conversion and win loyal customers by providing product opinions to help shoppers differentiate between products.

| View | Upload your own

I highly recommend reading through the slide deck and seeing what lessons you may be able to apply to your own site.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

Five Merchants Share Their Stories on Video

Just a heads up to merchants that we recently launched Inspiration Video Profiles for our Small Business News & Resources section. In these short videos, five successful Yahoo! merchants provide some insight into their beginnings, their challenges, and some advice for merchants considering starting an online retail venture. I would recommend the videos to any merchant thinking about how to start or even how to take their business to the next level.

Here’s a run-down of the merchants and videos:

• Au-Co Mai of emitations.com, retailer of sterling silver jewelry and celebrity jewelry, talks about her beginnings with internet retailing and the importance of listening to customers. Watch the video.
• Karen McMasters of barebabies.com, retailer of high-end baby strollers and products, chats about getting started and how her sales have grown since she started. Watch the video.
• Maia Haag of I See Me Inc., retailer of personalized children’s books, discusses the benefits and challenges of running a home-based business. Watch the video.
• Diana Nelson of Kazoo & Company, retailer of educational children’s toys, games and puzzles, speaks about how she takes care of customers and also tries to have fun to stave off career burn-out. Watch the video.
• Alan Hutchinson of HTMarket.com, retailer of home theater seating, furniture and equipment, talks about how he got started and to follow your passions. Watch the video.

The videos show that while each merchant really is unique, they all share the same entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to turn their ideas into a reality.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business