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Clicks Versus Bricks

With Merchant Solutions, you have the ability to sell hard goods (physical products you need to ship) or soft goods (downloadable products such as software, photos (JPGs), PDFs, or ebooks). If you are planning on selling a combination of hard goods and soft goods or only soft goods, you may want to be aware of a few potential issues.

Since fulfillment of soft goods happen immediately, store owners may not be able to prevent fraud orders. For downloadable products, a link to the product is presented immediately on the confirmation page at the end of the customer order process. This is unlike hard goods, where store owners are notified of the order and any flagged invalid credit card data before the fulfillment takes place. Therefore, the customer will already obtain your downloadable product before you can verify and process the order. With Merchant Solutions, the only information the customer needs to process the order is a valid credit card number. If the credit card address, expiration date, name on the credit card, or threedigit verification number on the back of the card are invalid, the order is still processed but will be flagged for further verification by the merchant. You can set up the system to automatically charge the credit card, but that still will not match the credit card number with the other customer information. If it's a true fraudulent order, you could be charging the credit card of someone who did not place the order. If you see a pattern of fraud orders, you can use the Risk Tools to block a certain IP address or a range of IP addresses from placing an order at your store. This doesn't prevent the person from going to the next coffee shop and doing the same thing, but it will sure slow them down.

Another issue that will arise if you are thinking of selling a combination of hard goods and soft goods is the confusion of shipping options. In the Shipping Manager, you can set up multiple shipping options such as express, priority, downloadable, ground, and/or air. But what happens if a customer orders a soft good and a hard good in the same order? Or if they only order a soft good? The Shipping Manager isn't smart enough to not display the other shipping options when someone orders a soft good. This can cause confusion when a customer is presented with all those options during the checkout process. They might even select the wrong shipping option and accidentally be charged extra for shipping when there is nothing to be shipped. A workaround to this issue is to manually notify the customer during the checkout process. You can add a warning message on the checkout page so the customer is aware of the shipping options, which will most likely not be read. This workaround will not dummyproof the ordering process but will somewhat reduce phone calls and tech support.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Yahoo! Store

Like anything in business, there are both advantages and disadvantages to choices you make. The trick is to choose a solution that is more advantage than disadvantage . Yahoo! Merchant Solutions are no different. So let's look at the advantages and disadvantages that they offer.

Advantages

The list below outlines some of the advantages of using the Yahoo! store. Yahoo! Merchant Solutions is a complete eCommerce solution that will help you build, manage, and market your store.

Turnkey solution Everything you need to get your site up and running.
Easytouse interface Page wizards and tools to help you create your products.
Efficiency Gets your site up and running quickly.
24/7 tollfree customer support Need help? Customer service representatives are standing by to answer your questions.
Email Get 100 email accounts with 2GB of storage per account
Secure credit card processing Give your customer peace of mind with SSL (Secure Socket Layer) when transferring sensitive data over the Internet.
Low monthly fees Lowrisk monthly fee to get you started selling worldwide.

Web statistics View website visitor trends and generate sales reports .
Backup system Complete built-in recovery system.
Ability to accept multiple payment options Ability to accept a variety of credits cards on your website.
Shipping tools Builtin shipping tools to help you streamline your shipping process. Ability to notify your customers when their orders are being shipped.
Marketing tools and discounts By being a Yahoo! Merchant Solutions customer, you have the ability to utilize Yahoo!'s marketing tools to increase your sales and discounts to popular marketing services.
Continuous development and new features With a strong business partner such as Yahoo!, you can guarantee that Yahoo! will continually improve and develop new store features.
The power and name recognition of Yahoo! With a trusted name such as Yahoo!, customers will feel safe and secure when doing business with you.

Disadvantages

Beware of some of the limitations when using the Yahoo! store. Having knowledge of some of the disadvantages will help you develop workarounds when building and managing your store. The following is a list of some of the disadvantages of using the Yahoo! store.

Dedicated customer support Although Yahoo! has 24/7 customer support, you don't get the same customer representative every time you call in. You may find yourself repeating the issue over and over again.
Risk Tools Yahoo! comes with a suite of tools to help identify and prevent fraud orders. When a customer places an order with a credit card, the credit card is immediately verified to make sure it's a valid credit card. The AVS (Address Verification System) and CVV (Card Verification Value) check the system to make sure that the information matches. Although the AVS and CVV information is verified , the system will flag orders, but not deny fraudulent orders. It's up to the storeowner to either accept the order if it's flagged or deny the order based on further investigations. The only valid information that the system needs to process the order is a valid credit card number. The system will process the order even with an incorrect address, name, city, ZIP Code, expiration date, and card verification number. The extra work involved to make sure that the credit card belongs to the customer can slow down the shipping process. Merchant Solutions does come with tools such as IP blocking if you see a pattern of fraud or suspicious orders from the same range of IP addresses.

In Chapter 14, "To Do ListManaging Workflow," we will look at how to review orders for fraud and identify the warning signs.
Downloadable products Planning on selling downloadable software, photos, PDFs, or ebooks? Since fulfillment of downloadable goods happens immediately, store owners may not be able to prevent fraud. For downloadable products, a link to the product is presented immediately on the confirmation page. This is unlike hard products, where store owners are notified of the order and any flagged credit card data before the fulfillment takes place for further investigation.
Nonintegrated affiliate program Planning on using an affiliate program to generate more sales? Even though you can use thirdparty affiliate programs or Yahoo!'s recommended affiliate software program, Commission Junction, you might find it tedious to track down a refund/credit order generated by one of your affiliates . Since the two ordering systems are not integrated, when you give someone credit in your Yahoo! store system, it does not automatically send that credit to the affiliate software system.
Customization with Store Editor In order to customize the Store Editor templates, you will need to learn RTML or hire an RTML consultant.

Now that you are familiar with all the options you have for building your online store with Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, go to http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/merchant/ and sign up for an account (see Figure 8.6). The next chapter will focus on those who do not know HTML and want to get their sites up and running as quickly as possible. You'll learn how to build your store with Store Editor, customize your site, and publish your site for business. So let's get started!