Yahoo! Merchant Back-of-House Observations

This morning, KPBS in San Diego did a story on Carol Bartz's tenure as Yahoo CEO and the company's current competitive challenges.  

I've been a Yahoo! Small Business Merchant for several years and, during that time, have noted and communicated to Yahoo! tech support, and to Ms. Bartz directly, a number of service design suggestions to the company's benefit.  (Plug here:  Their tech team, in my experience with hardware and Web, has been the most consistently high level professional of any I've encountered to date.) 

Suggestions to Yahoo! for Its Merchant Back-of-House

• The Merchant Starter dashboard is a full page of text-only/text-heavy, and could use a full icon-based redesign
• Starting with "define your terms", a dictionary/primer explaining terms would be important to non-tech-savvy SMB merchants
• The "Design Wizard" seems to require reloading of product each time a new design is tried on for size -- the ability to preview a new design without committing would be optimal
• A first-time SMB Web merchant will have no clue what "Store Tag Hub" means
• "Manual Transactions" needs to offer a printable/shippable invoice; currently it seems that a merchant has to manually create/e-mail one to customers
• "Orders" search capability needs to go back at least several years, not just the prior 50 date matches
• "Order Range" summaries should include in-state sales tax charged to assist with monthly reporting requirements (not just sales subtotals)
• "Statistics" should include a cluster map (or at least sorted lists) showing geographic locations of customer bill-to and ship-to addresses to assist with targeted advertising
• Sales summaries list quantities purchased by high-level product SKU, and they're needed by merchants per individual sex/size/color SKU breakout for forecasting/ordering
• "Order Settings" processes could be more SMB owner-friendly (when they're not Webmasters) 
• Parts of the site set-up process where new Yahoo! Merchants will really need tech support assist with walk-throughs, should be called out up-front
• Merchants may be very interested, early on, in adding links to their sites; the "Create Links" process could be made more intuitive showing exactly where on the site the links will appear, or even if they will appear as live links
• Adding to "Mailing Lists" is straight-forward; viewing those created is a visual challenge
• "Statistics at a Glance" showing pageviews should present them also geographically clustered; SMBs gain huge value in shipping planning/offerings by knowing where their  global customers are located and the pain their experience from high shipping costs for lower per-unit $ value sales
• The "Affiliate Program" can inform in its title (no click-through needed) that the vendor is Commission Junction and that there are baseline revenue level requirements; a solution for start-up SMBs who have a lot of pre-sales traffic should also be offered as a lower level revenue alternative.

Yahoo! Brand Impact and Why This Matters

In the three years I've been a Yahoo! Merchant, I've never seen redesign changes to its back-of-house design (which could be applied to any level of its Merchant offerings), though features have been added.  I've provided design feedback to at least three tech support representatives, and have been told that they'd "forward along" my recommendations.  No one has ever contacted me back to follow-up. 

As an e-commerce merchant and marketer I'd hope for a two-way, mutual relationship with my Web hosting provider.  Lack of response from Yahoo! to these recommendations from a merchant with global visibility and selling products to customers on three continents, gives a certain kind of impression of their brand's values and/or its challenges and priorities.

Millions of SMBs are still coming online, still discovering the value of the Web to enhance their traditional businesses.  And in today's economy where renewed vigor towards entrepreneurship is providing a sometimes-saving outlet for economic survival, Yahoo! has vast opportunity to make renewed brand impact.

Impact on One Yahoo! Merchant

I launched e-commerce site www.ThinkerClothing.com first with another "top 3" Web hosting provider shortly after they'd been bought out and dealt with a team which seemed to be putting its fingers in the dykes and quite ... distracted relative to the attention I needed anticipating a time-constrained launch.  Found the design/launch/(never occurred) banking connection experience, which took months, to be ... cumbersome -- and they actually missed my advertised launch date by over a month, though took my up-front design money.  I switched to Yahoo! for their simplicity, designed the site, loaded products, and was live (and processing orders) within 24 hours.  Couldn't have been happier, or more relieved.

Generally satisfied to recommend Yahoo!  as a merchant solutions provider, I've appreciated that things work as/when they're supposed to and consistently, and look forward to Yahoo! implementing any recommendations provided to date ... for their benefit and the benefit of their merchant customers.

(c) 2010 Lisa C. Clark
All Rights Reserved