Catalog Request Released for Checkout Manager

Next time you’re in Checkout Manager, you may notice some new additions. Page Configuration now has tabs for "Catalog Request" and "Catalog Request Confirmation," there’s a few new Checkout Buttons, and Advanced Settings includes a section for enabling or disabling Catalog Request. All this can only mean one thing – we’re happy to announce the release of the Catalog Request feature for Checkout Manager.

You can use Catalog Request to let customers sign up for catalogs and other items, such as special product alerts, other notifications and announcements, mailing lists, and email newsletters. If your store offers more than one catalog selection, you can let customers choose which items they’d like to receive by adding fields to the optional "Catalog Selection" section of your form.

Unlike the older version of Catalog Request (used with Order Forms), new forms created in Checkout Manager will have the same look and feel as the rest of your checkout pages. You can use Checkout Manager to create, customize, and preview page titles, page messages, sections, fields, and display options for both your Catalog Request form and confirmation page. The Enable/Disable Catalog Request option lets you choose when to activate Catalog Request for Checkout Manager in your store.

Merchants who use Catalog Request with Order Forms may like to know that moving to Checkout Manager will not disable your current Catalog Request pages. You may continue to use these pages until you choose to activate a new form in Checkout Manager. If you’ve already moved to Checkout Manager to take advantage of its added customization options and features, you can now create a Catalog Request form that matches the rest of your checkout pages.

For more information about Catalog Request, including how to create, customize and enable your form, how to link to your form, and how to receive catalog requests, please see our help pages.

Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

Better insights into your traffic and conversion rates

Ever wonder what percent of visitors are first time vs. returning visitors and the difference in sales between the two? Ever wonder which keywords bring in traffic but not sales? Ever wonder what you would do if you knew how your ad campaigns were performing in real-time and were able to make immediate changes to improve performance?

To answer those questions on Yahoo! in the past, you needed to use a 3rd party analytics solution with often complex integrations to ensure proper tracking. Today, Yahoo! announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire the analytics platform of IndexTools, a leading web analytics provider.

We are planning to incorporate this technology into our product offering after completing the acquisition, in order to provide you with not only the ability to track, compare, and view reports across key metrics, but more importantly, to segment and analyze data to understand what’s working well on your site and what’s not working. You don’t need more reports—you need actionable insights that can drive better traffic through natural search or search marketing optimization and improve conversion rates.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

Finding the “Seeds for Success”

If you’re a woman who’d like to start or grow a business online, or if you know someone who fits this description, be sure to check out a post made by entrepreneur/television personality Carolyn Kepcher to Yodel Anecdotal, the Yahoo! corporate blog. The post outlines “Seeds for Success: Empowering Women Entrepreneurs,” a new grant program announced yesterday by Yahoo! Small Business and Kepcher, which will award three women entrepreneurs with business grants including cash, mentorship, and technical services valued at more than $25,000 each.

In her post, Kepcher — best known for her appearances as an advisor to Donald Trump on the NBC television show “The Apprentice” in her capacity as executive vice president of Trump Co. — also shares some thoughts about being a woman in business and finding work and life balance. Read Carolyn Kepcher’s post to Yodel Anecdotal.

If you’re interested in applying for the grant, stop by the Seeds for Success website to learn more about the program and submit your application online.

Melissa Chaika Sobel and Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business

Measuring Cross-Sell Performance and Increasing Flexibility

When we launched enhancements to Cross-Sell last fall, there were some features we wanted to deliver but could not. Since the launch, we’ve also received feedback from merchants requesting some refinements. With this release, we’re introducing new Cross-Sell reporting, custom pricing labels, and changes to the cart display.

Cross-Sell Reporting

For merchants using the latest version of Cross-Sell, there are six new graphs available in the Graphs section of Store Manager. These graphs allow you to view orders and revenue from auto-suggest, merchant created rules, or the two types of cross-sell combined. With this insight into cross-sell performance, you can now test using each type of cross-sell to determine which one works best for your site. For auto-suggestions, note that the more traffic and sales you have, the more data the auto-suggestions have to work with, so if you’re not using auto-suggest now you may want to revisit it as your store grows. In order to ensure that all cross-sell data is properly collected, a one time publish of Order Settings is needed once the new graphs are available. Please note it can take up to 48 hours for cross-sell statistics to be compiled and reflected in these new reports (e.g. cross-sell driven purchases made on Wednesday will show up in the graphs by Saturday).

Pricing Labels

Some of the feedback we received on the cross-sell addition to product pages pointed out that the pricing labels were confusing to shoppers when products had sale prices but not cross-sell prices. We agree, and we also recognize that each store has its own needs. While, we will continue to provide default labels (which now distinguish between sale price and cross-sell discount price to clear up that confusion), you can also customize all the pricing labels for price, sale price, and cross-sell discount price in product pages and in the cart. Order Settings must be published the first time new labels are created for the labels to take effect.

Cart Display

We also fixed an issue that affected cross-sell appearance in the cart. Cross-sell products once again have their name and info beside them, rather than below them.

Laurie Briggs
Yahoo! Small Business