Thoughts on one page checkout for Yahoo! Store

So you're a Yahoo! Store owner and you're thinking of adding the one page checkout?  Here are our thoughts on the feature.

One page checkout is good for shoppers when all of these conditions are met:
1) Already have an account with the merchant
2) Shopper trusts the merchant
3) Shipping rates are pre-populated by existing account settings, so shipping is displayed prior to submitting the order.

As a shopper, I like the single page checkout that Amazon.com provides, but only because the above requirements are met.

Small merchants do not typically have the brand loyalty or awareness that is required to meet the above guidelines. 

It is important when making any change to your checkout page, you clearly think through how your customers will react to the change.  Remember that a good chunk of your daily business comes from customers that have never heard of you before today. 

Not optimizing or designing for the Chrome browser? OOPS!

The official announcement came today via the Google Blog that starting on June 15th, Google has partnered with Amazon and Best Buy to sell what will be known as the Chromebook. This super fast, simple, web-centric PC platform will be rented to businesses for $28/month and individuals/schools for $20/month.

So the question is, has your Yahoo! Store been designed to be Chrome compliant? Ours are! Checkout our candles at Scents & Sprays using your Chrome browser. The experience will be fast, smooth, and error free.

Don't let the marketing fool you. These computers will have solid state hard drives (in the range of 16GB), so you will still be capable of storing content locally.

So when moving forward with your next redesign, keep Chrome in mind. In fact, keep Safari in mind... Internet Explorer (versions 8 and up)... and of course, Firefox should all be used to test your site for usability and cross-browser compatibility.

Yahoo! Store Summit 2010 - SEO and SEM Session

Kevin Richards, CEO of Ventura Web Design, spoke at the 2010 Yahoo! Store Summit on the topics of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing.

View the speaking panel segments here:

SEO Segment 1 - Mike Ober, Yahoo! Sr. Mgr. of Merchant Development introduces the panel. Title tags based on your keywords and content.

SEO Segment 2 - Pay-per-click testing. Change on or two words. Use Yahoo! tracking links. Track revenue and conversion rates. Increase click-through rate (quality score).

SEO Segment 3 - PPC tips: Landing page optimization. Promote your value proposition at the top of your page and make it easy for customers to know why you're the best. Optimize your title and description constantly and don't rely on Google to choose for you.

SEO Segment 4 - "I'm a one man operation, what should I do in 1 hour a day?" and "I rely heavily on Google [SERPs], how do I diversify? How can I hire a web designer that won't screw up my SEO?"

Webmaster Guidelines from Google is one of the easiest ways to make sure your site redesign goes smoothly, from an SEO perspective.

Ventura Web Design Complaints

For nearly 15 years (since 1997), Ventura Web Design has been helping clients from all over the United States build successful online webstores. Today we want to toot our own customer service horn a little bit.

The Better Business Bureau of Southern Nevada has awarded us with an A Rating. Checkout all of the Ventura Web Design Complaints. When you visit the BBB live site, you will find that we have zero unresolved complaints. Places like Rip Off Report will show just a single consumer complaint, which is the same complaint that was filed with the BBB back in 2007.

It is quite remarkable that a business that has been operating for nearly fifteen years only has one complaint that has ever been filed with the BBB. After working with thousands of clients, we are proud of our exceptional customer service rating.

All Clients are encouraged to work directly with their Project Manager to resolve any mis-communications or misunderstandings that inherently arise when building a new business. And that's what developing or redesigning a website is. You are building a new business, often times from the ground up. We both (Client and Ventura) bring different experience to the table. It is through a mutual understanding and respect for one another that we are able to produce the right e-commerce website for you.

Written by: Kevin Richards, CEO of Ventura Web Design

Visit Kevin Richards on LinkedIn

Introducing Advanced Cross Selling for the Yahoo! Store

Straight from the Ventura Web Design Labs comes another great programming feature for the Yahoo! Store: Advanced Cross Selling

This feature was inspired by the number 1 online retailer in the world, Amazon.com. The concept is simple. Sell more products to the same customer base, thus increasing your average ticket value (avg total per order).

How does it work? Simple. Retailers identify which items they want to be sold together as a "combo". Choose the amount of discount (dollar amount or percentage off) that your customer will receive by purchasing all items together and you're done.

Here is an example of how Amazon.com has deployed this feature with similar products:

This feature is available for most Yahoo! Stores. Please contact Ventura Web Design today to discuss adding this new feature to your store.

Internet Retailer 2011

Internet Retailer is coming to San Diego this year. This event is for those who want to increase their e-commerce knowledge and truly take their webstore to the next level.

Visit Ventura Web Design as we demo new Yahoo! Store features that are sure to increase your bottom line.

Act today and save! Early bird registration ends soon. Visit IRCE for details.

Meet our Yahoo! Store Developers and discuss specifics about your existing e-commerce store.

Thinking of switching platforms? IRCE is a great opportunity to meet with the Yahoo! Store / Yahoo! Small Business team and learn about the capacity, stability, and reliability of this industry leading platform.

Experts will be on hand to help you asses your current strengths and weaknesses, no matter what platform you are currently using for e-commerce.

Google +1 - SEO for your Yahoo! Store

Today the master himself, aka Matt Cutts, announced that you can signup to participate in Google's new +1 (pronounced "Google Plus One"). This is the first official sign from Google that a new signal of SEO will be taken from your social networking ability. Learn more about +1 directly from the Webmaster Tools Blog.

Gone are the days of keyword stuffing and content farms. Somewhat gone are the days of useless inbound links and linkspam. Now your focus must be on one thing: QUALITY

So with everyone in the SEO world speculating that Facebook Likes will somehow be used as a signal, Google did a real nice thing by simply rolling out their own version.

Action note: Go here NOW and sign yourself up to be able to participate in Google +1.

And of course, for the Yahoo! Store owners utilizing custom RTML templates, don't forget to contact Ventura Web Design to help install your Google +1 when it goes live.

You can opt in to using Google +1 now by going to Google's Experimental Site. Of course you'll need to have a Google account and be logged in.

For those of you who want to see Google +1 immediately, Danny Sullivan has posted some good pics in his article today.

So is this Google's answer to the Facebook Like Button? It's not entirely clear at this point. It is widely known that Bing has integrated the Facebook Like button into its search results and you can like something right from Bing's SERPs (search engine results page).

Another great reason to get involved with the cool new tool is that it also applies to Google Adwords results. So how cool would it be to get more qualified traffic on your pay-per-click? If only more people would get involved with Google's attempts at going social. The rumors involving Google Circles have been widely denounced.

There are some +1 detractors out there, who certainly have valid points, as to why this Google Labs experiment will ultimately fail like others have.

If you're looking for a really quick summary of Google +1 and why you should care, take a look at Mashable.