Spice up your Yahoo! Store for the holiday season with these three great but underused features. Rollover Thumbnails Category pages typically show a smaller (thumbnail) version of the product (or sub-category) in some kind of a grid-like arrangement. These thumbnails, by definition, are rather small so you have to make sure those images are detailed and interesting enough to entice the visitor to click through. But what if you could show an additional view of each product before the visitor clicks its thumbnail? Even without any customization every Yahoo! store already has the option to store and display an additional image for each product: a closeup, a lifestyle shot, a model, etc. You can do this by uploading an additional photo into the inset property. This photo will then show on the item detail page, but only there. With our Rollover Thumbnails you can feature these secondary images right on the category pages. When the visitor hovers his or her mouse over the

No doubt most of you know by know about the impending spin-off of Yahoo Small Business as a new company called Luminate. Today, Yahoo sent out a Questions and Answers document ( https://help.yahoo.com/kb/yahoo-small-business/SLN26667.html ) which has quite a bit of useful info, but we did receive a number of inquiries from our clients because, understandably, they are anxious about these forthcoming changes. Most of the questions we've got revolve around how the domain name changes will affect their stores. So for starters, the domain name changes won't happen until the actual "spin-off" date, when Yahoo Small Business splits off from Yahoo. That date has not been announced yet. Some of you inferred from the Yahoo mailing that the domains will change on October 14, which is not the case. At the time the spin-off happens, the yahoo domain names (for example the URL of the shopping cart, or search page) will change, BUT there will be automatic redirects i

It’s a humbling privilege to be the voice of this week’s YTimes newsletter.  My name is Julia Fowler and I’ve enjoyed numerous opportunities over the past decade to exchange personally with many of you in Yahoo’s Small Business community, but it’s been an especial privilege to have partnered with Istvan for the past several years as his Chief Creative Officer and Lead Designer.   While I most often get to hide behind the scenes, it’s an honor to be addressing you this week from the front-lines of the design team.  Hopefully if you’re looking to bring your website in line with the current marketplace staples, these insights will help you understand some of the what’s and ‘why’s of how to do just that.     8 Advantageous Predictions for Website Designing in 2015 If you've been contemplating making changes to your website design, now could be the right time.  The developments showing favor in 2015 could turn your outdated model into a sales-generating-machine with the right strateg

Ytimes' owner, Istvan Siposs, has graciously invited me to craft our company's email newsletter for this week. For those of you who I have yet to exchange with, I am Drea Solan (pronounced “Dray”), and have worked with Istvan for several years, serving in a blended role of E-Commerce Consultant/Partner and Project Manager for YTimes.  Over the years I have spoken to several hundred online merchants and have reviewed an even greater number of e-commerce web sites.  I look forward to connecting with even more of you in our YTimes online merchant community - you are indeed in good hands with our team here! Our email newsletter from last week, "Big Announcement from Google: Mobile-Friendly Algorithm Change is Only Weeks Away", received tremendous response as well as a number of follow-up questions. We are happy to have gotten the word out to all of you regarding Google's fast-approaching changes and it is good to see so many of you taking it serious

Mobile traffic/e-commerce is here to stay. Three to five years ago mobile e-commerce was a small blip on analytics screens. Back then analysts predicted the trend to grow, and early adapters jumped the gun and either went for a dedicated mobile solution (in addition to their main site,) or a mobile app. Responsive design was really not part of the every day conversation among online retailers or web designers. Fast forward to 2015 and - depending on whose statistics you read - between 15 - 50% of traffic to e-commerce sites come from mobile devices. Look at your Google Analytics and check out the "Mobile" menu option. You'll see what percentage of your traffic now comes from mobile. You can also see how much revenue or conversion you get from mobile. (If you don't have that info it means that e-commerce tracking is not set up in your Google Analytics. Contact www.monitus.net; they offer such a solution with a bunch more bells and whistles for Yahoo Stor

If you have a customized Yahoo! Store, chances are you are at least somewhat familiar with the “files library” in the store editor. The “files library” (“lib” for short) is an area where you can store files; all kinds of files such as images, css files, JavaScript files, videos, etc. You can access this area from your editor by clicking the “Files” button in your editor toolbar. Storing files in the “lib” has many advantages over storing files elsewhere (for example on your web hosting server.) The “lib” is measurably faster than web hosting (any file that comes from http://site.yourdomainname.com/... is hosted on your web hosting account and not in the “files library”.) In addition, all files stored in the “lib” are automatically “gzipped” , meaning they are compressed before sending across the web and decompressed by the browser resulting in a smaller payload – and therefore, faster delivery. But did you know that you can also have your “lib” hosted on a Content Delivery Network (C