Yahoo has revamped and relaunched its DIY e-commerce service Yahoo Stores, which was first launched in 1998 for small businesses to sell their goods online.
Yahoo Stores offers web hosting, domains, storage space, SEO help, emails, and basic pre-packaged website templates among other features, allowing business owners to create websites and start selling their products in a very short period of time.
Plans & Pricing: There are three different plans a user could opt for: Basic for $26 per month, Professional for $69 per month and Premier for $249 per month. The Professional plan offers listing of unlimited number of products and unlimited storage space. The Premier plans offers unlimited bandwidth, in addition to offerings of the Professional plan. The Professional and Premier plans also provide $100 Yahoo Bing Search Ad credit and API access for third-party solutions. Businesses opting for the Premier plan also get access to a priority customer support number. Yahoo will be charging a transaction fee of 1.50% from Basic customers, 1% from Professional customers and 0.75% from Professional customers.
New back-end tech: The company says that it is providing users with the same SEO technology, including relevant keywords in website URLs and concise descriptions that it employs for the content on Yahoo.com. Plus, a new payment-processing service that is automatically PCI (payment card industry) compliant has been employed on Yahoo Stores. This basically means that it will become easier to discover Stores – thus boosting Yahoo search – and businesses will able to accept payments immediately.
Live Web Insights: Yahoo has also extended Live Web Insights for mobile support to Yahoo Stores, which will allow businesses to manage their websites on-the-go. It also provides access to advertising and marketing apps (among others) available on Yahoo Commerce Central.
Last year, Yahoo had acquired e-commerce app platform Lexity. Two months later, the company rebranded the app as Yahoo Commerce Central. The app lets users distribute over multiple e-commerce platforms at once. Besides that, it also analyzes merchant’s store and provide them with insights and real-time analytic stats to grow their businesses.
At present only the iOS version of the Live Web Insights app is available. Yahoo hasn’t revealed anything about if and when an Android version will be released.
Competition
-Last year, Shopify ventured into the Indian market by launching Shopify.in. Much like Yahoo Stores, Shopify allows allows businesses to create websites and sell goods online. The platform offers four monthly plans at $14 (Starter), $29 (Basic), $79 (Professional) and $179 (Unlimited).
-In October 2013, Shopify entered into a partnership with Getitbazar to offer SMEs an independent e-commerce enabled website and domain name for Rs 25,000 per year. Two months later, Shopify forged a partnership with Bharti Airtel to offer its DIY e-commerce solution to the telco’s SOHO and SME customers.
-In June 2014, Amazon Asia and Catamaran Ventures formed an e-commerce joint venture, which was expected to allow SMBs to sell their products online. There aren’t any specific details regarding this business yet.
-Last month, Infibeam’s SaaS-based DIY e-commerce platform, BuildaBazaar launched a third-party app store for businesses using its platform.
-Earlier this year, online payment gateway company CCAvenue launched its DIY web store. The service is free till March 31, 2015.
-Delhi-based e-commerce platform for SMEs and retailers, Kartrocket extended its shipping solution Shiprocket as a standalone service to all e-tailers in India, last year.
-In December 2013, DIY e-commerce platform SellMojo launched a marketplace to list all products sold through its various partners. Sellmojo enables companies to sell products via Facebook.
