Yahoo! Review: E-Commerce (4 stars)
Good E-Commerce Options, but You Pay for It
Our biggest problem with the Yahoo store system is that you have to pay a transaction fee on every sale you make through your website. This eats into your profit per sale, significantly reducing the return on your investment. The percentage they take off your sale varies depending on your package. See Value section for more details.
So even though you get unlimited products, a nice-looking shopping cart, and a good range of options, the value is seriously lowered by having the dreaded transaction fee.
Unlimited Products
While Yahoo does fill their pockets from your Web store’s sales, at least they give you the option to put up as many products as you’d like. Many builders put a limitation on the number then charge you extra when you want to add more. If you use SiteBuilder instead of Store Editor to build your site however, you're limited to 150 products.
Awkward Product Upload System
According to the “Getting Started Guide” both the Store Editor and Catalog Manager (within “Store Manager”) are parallel tools for uploading products. If you upload a product on one, you do it on both. The guide says the best way to do it is to use “Catalog Manager.” We did as we were told but the uploaded products didn’t appear on our website.
We called for support and were told not to follow the guide on this point, that it is in fact better to do all uploading from “Store Editor.” When you upload on “Catalog Manager” you have to go through extra steps in “Store Editor” for the products to show up on your website. Sound confusing? You bet it is.
The one good thing about Merchant Solutions’s upload system is that you can upload a number of products at once using a spreadsheet.
Lots of Shopping Cart Options with Easy Set-Up
Merchant Solutions gives you plenty of options within your shopping cart to account for the choices customers like to have when shopping online. And even though there were so many, it wasn’t hard to set up.
The options available include: shipping methods, tax options, time zones, countries you sell to, and even a shipping/ tax calculator (which calculates costs based on the customer’s location).
Manage Order Options in Your Shopping Cart from "Store Manager"
Payment methods include PayPal, a number of credit cards including (Mastercard, Visa, etc.) and even C.O.D. Naturally, you have to have a merchant account that takes these methods to be able to use them through your website. Of course, Merchant Solutions allows you to set up your merchant account with your website.
Professional-Looking Shopping Cart
The shopping cart is nicely designed and inspires confidence in those using it. You can customize the look of it to match your company colors and even include your company logo.
Customize Your Shopping Cart to Your Business
Evaluate the Risk of Fraud
Merchant Solutions provides you with tools for determining the risk of fraud from your customers. This can help save you against credit card fraud and other schemes people use to target merchants.
Evaluate the Risk of Fraud
The Usual Product Options
Merchant Solutions product options are typical. They give you the option to enter a sale price, the item's shipping weight and whether the item is taxable or available for order.
They also have a field in which you can specify the different options the item comes in, allowing your customers to choose sizes, colors, etc.
Integrated with Yahoo Auctions, but What About eBay?
Merchant Solutions naturally allows you to integrate your website with Yahoo Auctions (their answer to eBay). This makes it easier for you to set up products on the auction system through your website.
We guess that it was a strategic decision not to do the same for eBay, but we think it was a mistake. Hardly anyone knows about Yahoo Auctions – pretty much everyone uses eBay.
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