Merchants are reporting gains from new functionality added this year to Yahoo Merchant Solutions, the e-commerce platform that supports some 48,000 Yahoo Stores, Kevin Krim, vice president of product at Yahoo Small Business, tells Internet Retailer. GreekGear.com, for example, an early user of the recently released Yahoo Web Analytics and the platform’s enhanced cross-selling engine, Yahoo Cross Sell Manager 3.0, had doubled its total December 2007 revenue by mid-December 2008 and increased holiday season revenue overall by 33% from last year.
Organize.com, which also uses both tools and has built customized browsing pages using another tool, Yahoo Store Builder, increased its Thanksgiving weekend sales by 23% over last year and hit a 10-year sales record for the Monday after Thanksgiving. Organize.com is No. 453 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
Krim says Yahoo Web Analytics, which tracks shopper behavior on the site, allows site operators to test changes, observe results, and then implement them across the site or cancel them, depending on how they perform. Such insights can help retailers determine where on a web page to place such calls to action as Buy Now or Add to Cart. “We have seen that a change of placement can mean a significant difference in conversion rate,” he says.
Cross-Sell Manager 3.0, launched earlier this year, builds on Yahoo’s existing product recommendation technology to gather data across more aspects of shopper behavior and refine the algorithms used to power the presentation of cross-sells, essentially, making a more sensitive recommendation engine, Krim says. “We’ve seen that generically, when our merchants use the cross-selling engine, they have an average order value 30% higher than merchants who are not using it,” he adds.
About 48% of the top 1,000 merchants operating Yahoo Stores have started using Yahoo Web Analytics since it was released in October as a free add-on to Yahoo Merchant Solutions’ two top levels of service.
Krim notes that the next platform enhancements for Yahoo Store merchants—functionality that gives merchants more flexibility in the types of coupons they can offer—is scheduled to roll out within the next two quarters. “In this kind of difficult economic environment, we are focusing on things that help our merchants adapt to what people need,” he says.
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