The following alert was sent to Yahoo! Store owners just a few minutes ago:

“Some merchants are reporting page loading errors on their live site where the page is going to a white screen. We are aware of this issue and currently investigating. Additional updates will be provided as more information becomes available. ”

If your site is experiencing this issue, CALL US AT 866-515-2057.  We are aware of the issue and can work with you to implement a fix.

Simple. Straightforward. Guaranteed.

As the Christmas rush approaches, and it’s time for you to select your Yahoo! Store Designer, Ventura Web Design is ready to work with you.

When you work with Ventura, we make the following promises to you:

1) Your site will be done within 30 days - guaranteed!

2) You will work directly with the people who are building your store. No middlemen!

3) Your site will be easy for you and your visitors to use.

Choosing a quality company to work with is more about selecting the right fit, than choosing the company that makes the wildest claims about themselves. Take note of who returns your calls promptly, who listens to what you need, and who takes the time to work with you before the sale. These are all indicators of how you will be treated once the contract is signed.

So with the economy coming to a screeching halt, now is the time for serious merchants to ensure that they are following best practices in customer service. Remember, there are three reasons that customers choose to shop online over the in-store experience: 1) Price 2) Selection 3) Service

Price is obvious… And with rising gas prices, people are even more likely to shop at your store to keep costs down. In fact, they may even shop with you if your prices match the store, simply to avoid the drive.

Selection is another one that doesn’t need a lot of discussion. Make sure that you have the right products to ensure that your niche makes sense to the customer.

Service is the focus of today’s blog. Here are a few quick reminders to help you and your employees stay on target:

1) Reply to emails within 2 hours. Many customers expect that their email will be lost or ignored… Show them that is not the case with your company.

2) When there is an issue with an order, give the customer a call IN ADDITION TO sending them an email. You cannot predict which method of communication will work better for your customer. Give them the option by pro-actively contacting them multiple ways.

3) When a customer has a complaint (that is reasonable), be sure to quickly apologize for the mistake and correct it. The customer doesn’t want explanations of why the mistake happened, nor do they want a long discussion about how you’re the only one working and times are tough. Simply correct the problem quickly, thank him/her for the business, and help your customer get back to their busy life.

The economy is tough… and retail is the next sector to start showing signs of distress. Don’t let your brand or company suffer. Get back to the basics, focus on what makes your company different, and show the customers that they are the reason you are in business.

Reason 1,357,998 to love the Yahoo! Store: Easy Access to Yahoo! Shopping

Today Nielsen Online reported a 50% increase in year-over-year traffic at Shopping.Yahoo.com.

This is the biggest increase, by far, of any major retail site or portal. Read more at Internet Retailer, http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=26110

Yahoo! Store New Feature - American Express Verification

Yahoo! Small Business users may now process CID codes for shoppers paying with American Express. First Data Merchant Services (FDMS) recently added support for American Express CID (Card Identification) codes and Yahoo! has updated Checkout Manager to allow for displaying this field and passing the value through FDMS to American Express.

Special Note: Ventura Web Design recommends that all merchants who have their risk tools set to require CVV publish their order settings immediately. Without a publish, customers wishing to pay via American Express may be unable to checkout and/or may receive an error message stating that “CVV is required” but will be unable to enter that code on the checkout form.

Yahoo! has announced several new features that will be released soon.  Below is a breakdown of what’s new:

AMEX CID Code Support

Custom Labels for New Cross-Sell Tool

Reporting for New Cross-Sell Tool

Payment API Integration *Beta* with StoneEdge

Default Product Image Format Selection (GIF, JPEG & PNG)

RELEASE NOTES:

American Express CID Codes

The payment gateway that Yahoo! Store uses, First Data Merchant Services (FDMS) Nashville Platform, now supports CID (Card Identification) codes used by American Express. Merchants who would like to use the CID code when accepting American Express as a Payment Method will need to take specific steps to enable support for this feature with American Express. It is very important to review our Help content in detail prior to enabling this feature (help content will not be live until the release is completed).

Customize Labels in New Cross-Sell Tool

We’re adding more flexibility to Cross-sell display by allowing merchants to control the price labels. With this change, merchants will be able to customize labels for regular, sale, and cross-sell discount prices in both the product page and cart cross-sell to suit the needs of their site. For more detailed information on this feature, including steps to activate, please see our Help pages (help content will not be live until the release is completed).

Reporting for New Cross-Sell Tool

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. 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.

Payment API Integration *Beta* with StoneEdge

StoneEdge users can now integrate payment and order processing of their Yahoo! Store orders directly with StoneEdge. This will allow you to process payments, modify orders, and change order statuses directly in the StoneEdge application. Please contact your Account Manager for more information and to enable API settings in your store.

Default Product Image Format Selection

Currently, if you upload images larger than the values specified for product images, your original image is resized and converted to GIF format. With our upcoming release there will be two new variables added which allow you to control the default format for resized images. This allows you the flexibility to choose the format that best meets your needs, including GIF, JPEG, or PNG. You can also choose a default value for images generated by the Store Editor for navigation buttons or display text. The default setting of GIF will remain so no changes will be made automatically to your images. You can find these new variables in the Image Dimensions section of the Variables page. For more detailed information on this feature, please see our Help pages (help content will not be live until the release is completed).

Our booth setup call time was 6am. Needless to say, some of our presenters were a little late since it’s a Saturday. After some Starbucks, we’re ready to go.

8:15am.
Ventura CEO, Kevin Richards, demonstrates the Yahoo! Store to Las Vegas Mayor, Oscar Goodman.

9:35am.
We just met a mother of two beautiful twin girls. She needs a way to generate income from home. What better way to do that than with the Yahoo! Store.

11:45am.
Wow! We’ve met with so many people this morning. We brought over 800 information packets and we’re almost out. This has been a great day teaching small business owners and young entrepreneurs about the benefits of a Ventura Upgraded Yahoo! Store.

March 1st @ 8am.

You’re invited to join Ventura Web Design when we demonstrate the Yahoo! Store platform to over 1,000 attendees at the NCET Entrepreneur Expo.  Small business owners from around the world will be learning about the benefits and exceptional resources made available through Ventura Web Design and the Yahoo! Store.

We will be blogging from the event, so even if you’re not in Las Vegas, we will still share our knowledge with you.

Yahoo! announced today some major upgrades and modifications designed to improve the overall reliability and performance of the platform. Here’s a summary:

1) Yahoo! Stores will be backed up and hosted in different geographic locations. Simply put, your store will be shown to the end user via the server closest to him/her. This will make your site much faster, while making the backups more reliable in the event of a natural disaster.

2) The capacity to accept orders has been more than doubled.
3) The speed at which websites are displayed (referred to as serving capacity) has been doubled.

Ventura is proud to announce these improvements to our clients.  This is one major step in the right direction from Yahoo!.

Check it out! www.ScentsandSprays.com is our first store to implement and utilize the new Carousel Feature. Inspired by those geniuses over at Amazon.com, this feature enables Yahoo! Store owners to easily promote products on their front page in a fun and usable way.

This new feature can be in addition to, or in lieu of, your standard front page Specials.

So take a minute to checkout this great new feature. Send us a comment and let us know what you think.