Speed, we all love it and want more of it! Fast computers, faster internet connections and faster internet browsers are all well and good, but what can we do to make a faster web page? Every day, web sites and online stores are getting flashier.  CSS and JavaScript can do a lot of cool stuff, and images can help a site grab your attention.  Recently, Google has begun using page load times to adjust search rankings, so make that one more reason to speed things up a bit. What I am going to talk about today will Smush your images, compress your JavaScript and minif your CSS, even use Sprites to help bring that slow site up to speed!

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There has been some buzz as of late over ways to convert visitors who would otherwise leave the site for any number of reasons.  In  a recent article from Practical Ecommerce they talked about converting users that land on a 404 page.  Most of the time they will get a 404 page if you remove an item from the store and or site and the visitor clicks on an old, for example on a search results page.  The page they are attempting to view is not available and they will see a 404 error. Continue reading “custom 404 page” »

Over time, your store will take longer and longer to publish.  Some of the things that contribute to this are the number of items in your store, the number of templates you have and the amount of work your templates need to do to make the HTML for the page.  One way to speed up publishing is to remove unnecessary elements from the editor.  If you have custom templates you can do a little RTML coding and change how the site will publish. Continue reading “Speed up your publish” »

So I wanted to have my first post this week, in case you missed the post a few days ago my name is Brad Crombs, and I wanted to help Chris by blogging for E Comm Solution. I come from a back ground of basic web design and advanced CSS. I will be sharing my CSS tips and tricks in the Yahoo store, but this information can also be applied to the Web in general.  Today I will be going over in-cart CSS for the Yahoo! store and setting a custom background color, one thing you can’t change without downloading, and customizing the default style sheet. Continue reading “Easy Custom Cart CSS” »

Back to Basics will cover the main items that any store owner should know. I will not cover any RTML in this post; just the basics like images, image links, links, small CSS changes, and other tips on HTML for everyone that does not like to learn the major items but just the little ones to make managing a store easier. Enjoy.

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Today I am going to talk about Trust marks, Yes the “make your customer feel good” marks. Every online store uses trust marks, Best Buy, New Egg, Dicks sporting goods and many more. those are big name company’s and yet they still need to tell their customer that you can trust our cart. So what can you do? you can go to mcafee.com and buy their badge and that will be around $800 a year, I am not saying to not look into the Badge or VeriSign will run over $500 a year and most be name companies use both of them and it’s a good way to go if you have the funds but most of us don’t have the money to spend on that kind of trust a few options I would like to share with you are free and just take some time. Continue reading “shopping cart abandonment part 2, Trust Marks” »

Many items that fall under many sections, Brands, categories and maybe price but all show the same Path or Bread Crumbs, in the Yahoo! Merchant solutions it will only show the Parent section that holds that item. There are a few options to showing the bread crumb trail and the one that I will be sharing today will be multi-breadcrumb.
With Multi-breadcrumb it will show all paths to that item and all will link back to the section that it came from, now this is not “live breadcrumbs” as that will take JavaScript to make it work and I don’t like to share JavaScript code because that will sometimes get hard but this is the same RTML that is used in Live breadcrumbs and can work for you if you know how to code it. I will be showing you how to modify the current breadcrumbs template to make this work.

Continue reading “Store Multi-Breadcrumbs” »

I am working on a series on Cart abandonment and don’t have it done yet but I am going to link to my buddy Ben and his blog post on Yahoo! Web Analytics, So enjoy!

You have your store, you have your products, now it’s just a waiting game for customers, Right? wrong! I would like to know if you take the time to shop your own store, and how often? I browse and shop my site once a week, and not just to add an item to my cart but to place a full order, yes, a full order.  You might think “that will mess up my stats!” well, would you rather have stats that are off every so often, or a failed shopping cart?  You need to see if your card processor is working, and to know what to expect when a customer goes into your cart.  If you miss something, then your customer is going to miss something.

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When you start a Yahoo Merchant Solutions online store the cart will not match the store, unlike most other shopping cart systems the template will not pass through. this is not a flaw with the yahoo cart but a way to make it more secure and safe for you and your customer but at the same time you will not have the same look and feel of your real store. I would like to provide you some fast easy ways to change the look and feel of the yahoo store shopping cart and help reduce bounce rates from your customer. Continue reading “Your cart on Your store” »