USPS real time rates are a feature that has been long desired, you can always pay a developer but here is a walk through. I was working on other projects and for a long time I had some issues with USPS’ API and it is because their testing server is not all that functional so after sending an email to USPS API support they put my user ID to the production server and I was getting rates! I have to give credit where credit is due and say that Mark Sanborn’s Blog helped me and gave me about 90% of the PHP code needed to get this feature working.

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I know it sounds odd, you are thinking that “I have email on my phone” and so do I. So why do I think this will help? If you are anything like me you hate notifications from your email when you get spam or mail that is not important to you, I have over 4 email accounts on my phone and some email addresses get hit with spam all day long but I want to get my new orders as soon as they come in. The solution is easy and anyone can do this!

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Google released Google +1 a few weeks ago and it is here to provide a type of “Social search” for any of your linked friends to your gmail account can see what you have “+1″ on a search and will display your name next to the search result page, check out http://www.google.com/+1/button/ for more info. today we would like to show you how to install the plus one on your yahoo store and align the button with Yahoo!’s social widget.

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Yahoo! recently released a new Feature to the Yahoo Store and Merchant Solutions called Social Share, This feature will add a Facebook Like button and a twitter share link for every product on your store. One issue, like every new feature, is if you have Custom templates in your store then you will have to make some RTML changes.  If you don’t have custom templates you can just turn it on and enjoy. I will be walking you through setting up the new SOCIAL-SHARE RTML operator.  Even if you don’t have custom templates I will also show you some nice CSS to add to your css-edits style sheet and get your social ON!

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Every year, the state you live in needs more money.  They tend to have funny ways of getting the funding they need.  For example, many states have a tax rate that changes with the county the customer is in or the item that is for sale. I am in no way a tax consultant and I live in a state that does not collect sales tax, making an article like this one that much more difficult to write.  I will attempt to show you the basics of setting up real time rates in a yahoo store using PHP, and you will be able to use this same script to set up tax rates by item type and or city and state.

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Here is a nice write-up about PayPal page and consistent look though out your store. Nicely done by my buddy Joshua Ray; Customize your Paypal Page for site consistency

It has been months since Yahoo! customer registration was announced on the Yahoo store blog and now, as of the 16th of August,  it is a live beta.  I, for one, am excited about this and the fact that it is a beta means that there is more in store for this awesome feature.  As of this write-up it supports some open ID platforms, such as Yahoo! Google and AOL. I am sure more are planned and I bet they will add a way to make your own ID.  Installation on a new store is easy as pie, so I will not cover that, but I am going to cover the HTML and RTML installations. Continue reading “Yahoo! Customer Registration” »

** check out the new Yahoo! social network plugin at Social Share** Social networking is big. If this is news to you, come out from the rock you live under and join the fun on the  ”interwebs”. I am going to show you how to add a Facebook Like button to your store with RTML code.  This button will have the item page URL built into it so everyone’s friends can see what they liked. The goal of this is to bring in new customers, and I hope that it helps your Yahoo! store.

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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” »