SETTING UP YOUR ECOMMERCE STORE
An ecommerce store will provide your offline store or your new store concept a place to grow and develop into a profitable opportunity for you. However, you do need to focus on what this type of store requires of you to set it up. If you were to set up a store through your own website, you would likely find yourself with countless obstacles and numerous third parties to work with.
With Yahoo! Store, this process is very simple. In this chapter, we are going to take you through the process of setting up your ecommerce store using Yahoo! Store.
The first step in the process is to design the store. As mentioned previously, you have two main options here. You can hire someone to do the work for you or you can work on building your ecommerce store yourself. We recommend giving it a try if you have even just basic knowledge of what it takes.
Use the Wizard
The wizard provided by Yahoo! Store is very simplistic and provides step by step directions. Even those who have never attempted to set up a store will be able to work through this process fairly quickly.
The wizard does allow you to customize the design of your website. You can choose logos, graphics and color schemes that work for your particular needs. In short, these tools really do provide you with the options.
The nice benefit of using this method is that you are using a system that is designed to be used on Yahoo! Store. That means that the process is integrated, easy to do and most likely successful the first time out the door.
Third Party Tools
To make it easier on you, the company has designed Yahoo! Store to be flexible enough to allow you to use various other tools for designing your website. Many people have experience with a particular program and want to keep using that program for their needs. That is no problem.
If you have your own design tool, you can use it easily. The most common option here is Dreamweaver, though most any type of website design tool will work with Yahoo! Store.
Have Someone Else Do It
The next option for you is to have a professional do the work for you. The website design process can be complex, especially if you are not sure what it takes to get your site up or you are unsure what you want on that site.
Some people simply want to hand over this task to a professional because their time is valuable. You may want to let a professional do the design work if you are looking for something highly customizable that will not work otherwise.
In all of these cases, the option is yours. You will find that the company is highly flexible in terms of allowing third party products to be used on the site or allowing companies to design the site for you.
Once the website is done and in place, the next step in the process is to load your products. You may have a list of products that you would like to add to the company site. You may not. If you do not, you will want to write these out and ensure that you have great pictures of the products, too. Accurate descriptions using search engine optimization are key to actually getting sales.
You will need to produce the names of your products as well as the descriptions for each one. If you do not have this type of list available, do take the time to design it with the following in mind:
All of your details need to be placed into a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet will then be used by the wizard to upload the data to the website.
Once you have that list of descriptions, Yahoo! Store makes the process of getting that list of products online fairly easy. Like the design process, the product upload process also has a very easy to use wizard. This step by step wizard is designed to ask you questions, to locate your files or information and to upload it. It may take some time, depending on the amount of products you have.
Once you work through this process, it only takes a matter of time to open your doors, virtually.
Now, you move on to the payment methods. Payment methods is a term used to describe the methods in which you will allow customers who visit your website, place their product in your cart and purchase it. There are several options out there, and you should research them for their costs. However, you do need to do a bit of set up work before you actually can get payment methods set up on Yahoo! Store.
First, you need to set up what is called a merchant account. A merchant account is a relationship you create with payment processers. Not just anyone can set up this type of account. You do need to be an official business operating in the United States (or elsewhere if allowed.) In addition, you will need to work through a series of set ups which will allow you to verify that you are a business operating where you say you are.
The fact is, in order to provide you with the ability to charge someone's credit card, for instance, these companies need to verify that you do have a real business and are trustworthy. The process is painless.
With Yahoo! Store, the recommendations are that you sign up for a merchant account through First Data or through PayPal. If you have a PayPal account already, this may be the simplest of options to start with.
Once you do this, you can then choose the types of payment methods you would like to accept. With Yahoo! Store, you can choose any or all of the following:
Once you select the choices you want, then you can start to tell the Yahoo! Store wizard what those decisions are. You will do this through a simple set up during the process.
If you do need to get a merchant account, the good news is that it is very easy to do. It should take you just a short amount of time to do so. It is recommended that you use both First Data and PayPal, but even just having one merchant account is enough.
If you already have an existing merchant account, the good news is that Yahoo! Store will provide you with the resources that you need to set your ecommerce store using that information. You need to ensure that this type of merchant account used is FDMS compatible. You may also need to contact Yahoo! Store's support to get your system set up.
From here, you just need to tell Yahoo! Store which of the payment methods you will allow your customers to pay with. This is as simple as completing a form within the wizard set up. It takes minutes. People often wonder which options to choose, though.
It is highly recommended that you give your customers as much freedom to choose here as is possible. The fact is, if someone tries to pay with one type of credit card and you do not support that credit card, the consumer may have no other choice than to turn to your competition to purchase their products. Do some research to find out what your competition is offering. Chances are good, you will want to offer numerous options for payment. Most are within the same range of cost anyway.
Now that your customers can select items from your store and they can pay for them, the next step in the set up process is to determine how they will receive those items. Anyone who has purchased anything online knows that some companies offer one or two shipping options while others offer numerous. In terms of what you should offer, determine what works for your customers.
In addition, keep in mind the type of products you are selling. If you are selling products such as computer parts, most people who buy these are trying to upgrade or fix a problem they have. They need fast shipping and will often pay a high price for it. On the other hand, if you are selling shoes, there may be less of a need for overnight delivery (though wedding products may be a different story!)
Like with all other steps in this process, Yahoo! Store really makes it easy for you to set up your payment needs with the company. All you need to do is to select which shipping carriers you would like to offer to your customers. Moreover, you will need to select your shipping rates.
When it comes to the shipping carriers, most companies will want to work with the most common and well-known companies, such as FedEx, USPS and UPS. You can visit the websites of each of those companies to learn more about their shipping options and how the process works for you in particular. Choose one or more of these companies based on what they can offer to you in costs and services. Most companies are fine with just using one company for shipping.
Now that you know which company you will ship with, consider what you will charge for shipping. When you visit a website to make a purchase, you will likely be charged a shipping and handling fee. What you may not realize is that fee is not necessarily just a charge from the shipping carrier, but also has other factors included such as the labor cost of the employees who are doing the shipping for you. You can wrap other costs into this cost, but there are several things to keep in mind.
Ensure that you select shipping rates that are based on:
If you are not sure where your shipping costs lie, take the time to factor in the profit you need to make as well as the costs of each step of the buying process from the maintenance of your website to the costs of paying the shipping carrier. You may also want to look towards your competitors to ensure that your costs are not too high or too far above where other competitors are.
Shipping charges are one of the biggest sticking points for many customers. For example, if you sell books on your new ecommerce site, the customer comes to the site, finds that you have the book they want but your shipping is expensive. They could spend ten minutes going to the local bookstore to get it instead. If your shipping is affordable, chances are good they will buy right then and there and avoid traveling to the actual bookstore.
The good news is that Yahoo! Store does a lot of this work for you. It will help you to determine what costs to charge. It also will automatically calculate and then display the shipping costs to your customers when they arrive at their shopping cart for payment.
Setting up shipping is really a matter of making a few choices on the wizard set up process. It is likely that it will only take you a few minutes to complete.
The next step in the process of setting up your ecommerce website is to set up the sales tax. Sales tax does not need to be paid by all purchases online. However, sales tax does differ from one state to the next. This is why it becomes very important for you to take into consideration what your state requirements are.
In most cases, if you sell to someone within your own state, you will need to collect sales tax from that person. On the other hand, if you are operating out of a state that is different from the state of the customer, it becomes the customer's responsibility to report the sales tax, generally at the time of paying income taxes. Nevertheless, it is a good idea to check your state's tax code before moving forward.
You will then need to set up the sales tax rates. Sales tax rates may different from one area to the next. Find out what the rate is from your state's tax authority and then input this information.
The good news, again, is that Yahoo! Store will help you with this process. The wizard will help you to set up the tax rates properly so that you do not have any problems with the Internal Revenue Service later. If you do have questions or concerns about this process, the company's support services are happy to help you.
In addition to this, the wizard allows you to enter this information in and then it will automatically calculate and then display the tax information in the customer's shopping cart. This makes the entire process simple.
Unlikely shipping charges, you should not alter this number to be anything but what it is legally supposed to be. You may need to revisit this topic again later if there are changes to your state's tax code that requires you to change the tax methods or collection amounts.
In general, this step also only takes a few minutes to complete. Once you do complete it, you usually do not have to think about it again, unless there is a change that needs to be made. Be accurate, here, as it is vital to the overall function of your site.
The good news is that you can open for business after all of those steps are complete. Sure, there may be several steps here, but they are all simple and usually take just a handful of minutes to complete. The good news is that this last step is still very simple.
Once you work through the wizard provided by Yahoo! Store, you will find a verification process. You just need to verify the information you have included thus far. Do not worry. If you make a mistake, you can easily go back and change it.
Once you are sure that everything is correct, you just need to click on the button labeled "open for business.” Really, that is all it takes. Once you do that, you will have your site go live on the Internet. You can immediately begin taking orders and passing out information about your business. You are ready to go!
Do you need help through this process? The good news is that it is available online. You can work through the entire set up process yourself in the middle of the night if you would like to. However, if you do run into problems, you can contact customer support or customer service right away.
Service for those who are members is available throughout the day and evening, though customer service hours are limited to business hours. You will get online customer service support 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. There is a link within your wizard set up process, and on the website, that will help you to get help.