If you have a Yahoo Store and do not host your images somewhere outside your Yahoo Store there are serious issues that will affect your listings on sales sites including one that is especially important to your success: Google Product Search aka Google Base (formerly called Froogle).

If you don’t know or have not paid someone to upgrade your Yahoo Store and host your images somewhere else this issue affects your store.

Fortunately, there is already a solution you really need to know about. That solution is provided by YourStoreWizards (formerly Y Store Tools) and ironically we were using them, but we would not know what we do now if we had not changed feed providers and come back to them.

It has taken months, dozens of hours and emails, and increased costs for one of my favorite Yahoo Store owners so if you find this information valuable I ask that you repay them by visiting their excellent online personalized gift store.

I finally know enough about how Yahoo Stores work to determine what the issues are and share them.

If you have a Yahoo Store it is IMPERATIVE that you read and understand this post.

If you know anyone who owns a Yahoo Store do them a huge favor and send them a link to this post. It will save them a lot of money and increase their sales.

Special thanks to Jim at YourStoreWizards (Twitter), Yahoo Store Developer Michael Vorel of VastPlanet, and most importantly Yahoo Store Expert Rob Snell, author of the book Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies for answering my questions

Specifically, I had to determine why the feeds from GoDataFeed did not have thumbnail images in them (since the store did) and why traffic dropped from Google Product Search.

Here is the distilled version:

1. The default hosting in Yahoo stores has drawbacks and that is what most Yahoo stores use. Two major issues that affect feeds is that there are no thumbnail images in a standard Yahoo Store and the URL of your images in your store actually changes. (If anyone knows why a Yahoo store would do something with such negative consequences I would love to hear from you!)
2. YourStoreWizards actually pulls the images from a Yahoo store, hosts them on their servers for use in feeds, and creates thumbnail images which they also host and use for the feeds. Other Feed solution providers do not choose to provide that service and should only be used if you host your images outside your Yahoo store (which is recommended but can be a major undertaking with additional risks and expense).
3. If your images are currently stored at Yahoo since there are no thumbnail images in your store so no feed service provider that does not host your images can pull them and get them into your feeds or c an not include thumbnail images.

Yahoo Stores should ONLY use YourStoreWizards unless they store all their images including thumbnail size images somewhere outside their Yahoo Store.

I am not aware of any other feed solution that provides image hosting services as part of their feed solution. The other two best feed solutions I know of are GoDataFeed and SingleFeed. I know that GoDataFeed does not choose to host images.

SingleFeed and Rob Snell did an excellent Webinar on Shopping Engine Success for Yahoo! Stores which includes this warning:

Making changes to sizes of images or any other image changes can cause loss of images in Yahoo stores. They advise that it is better to host images elsewhere and call them into your store.

Based on that information I believe that SingleFeed does not host images so only Yahoo Stores who have their images hosted outside their store should use SingleFeed. I am attempting to confirm this information and will update this post when I hear back from them.

There is a known problem with images from Yahoo Stores and Google Product Search. Yahoo stores continually change the URLs for where they store your images and that affects whether Google Product Search (and probably other sites) can find them or not.

When the path to an image changes in your Yahoo store between the last feed sent to Google, when the search occurs your images will be missing from the feed.

Since YourStoreWizards hosts multiple sizes of your images at static URLs this issue does not affect their feeds. This is the reason Yahoo Stores using YSW will get more traffic and sales from Google Product Search.

Conclusions:

1. It would be best to host the images used in your Yahoo Store elsewhere to avoid future problems with images. A recent change caused images in some stores to be too large.
2. If you want to continue to allow Yahoo Stores to host your images you need to use YourStoreWizards at least for the SAS and Google Product Search feeds. Some sites resize their own images so you could use SingleFeed or GoDataFeed for them but you would have to check that on a case by case basis – most likely not worth the hours involved.
3. If you chose to host your images elsewhere so you have total control, I would recommend staying with GoDataFeed because there solution is far more powerful than YSWs (so far – YSWs is upgrading their service) and they are much easier to work with. I received 19 separate emails from Jim before I finally understood they were hosting images. I still had to go to Rob Snell to get definitive answers.
4. I advised GoDataFeed that they should be notifying their clients that have Yahoo Stores about this issue. GoDataFeed needs to either host the images or make it clear that they do not and recommend alternative image hosting solutions to their Yahoo Store clients.
5. I have detailed information from Rob Snell regarding image hosting that I can sort through if you want to consider hosting your images elsewhere.

The bottom line: You need to choose one of these options and only you as a Yahoo Store owner can decide what is best for you:

1. Leave your images in the Yahoo store and use YourStore Wizards exclusively for your feeds.
2. Leave your images in the Yahoo store and use a combination of YWS and GDF so that you can take advantage of optimizing whatever feeds do not have to rely on images hosted at YSW.
3. Pay extra to host your images at YSW while using other feed solutions. The last email I got from Jim at YSWs said, “We can provide hosting for images to be used on their Yahoo store but will need to charge for the bandwidth. The hosted images each have unique URLS which remain static. These could be called in using HTML.”
4. Host your images elsewhere for maximum control and freedom to use any feed solution you choose. I sincerely believe GoDataFeed has the strongest benefits for you but only if you control where your images are (or they decide to add image hosting).

If you currently leave your images in your Yahoo Store and use GoDataFeed, SingleFeed or any other feed solution that does not host your images the way YourStoreWizards does you need to expedite moving your feed to YSWs.

That should increase traffic and sales from Google Product Search because it will eliminate the missing images issue.

GDF currently does not believe their not hosting images affects very many Yahoo Stores and YSW has built an entire business model around the fact that it does.

What I have explained here is critical to the success of Yahoo Stores. If you do not understand it or need specific questions answered use the comment section in this post or contact me directly.

GOOGLE PRODUCT SEARCH RESOURCES:

• Using Google Product Search to Test Demand for a Product

Click Image to Make a Bar Code

If you ever wonder why I don’t post daily it is because what should be simple is often incredibly complicated and all the research takes a lot of my time. I then publish the results so others don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

If you sell products this post is important to you.

Amazon has recently started requiring UPC codes for products listed for sale. Genuine Seller wrote a beneficial post about Dealing with Amazon UPC Requirements that anyone who lists unique individual products should read.

If what you are selling already has a UPC code and you have either a bar code reader or the exact product name you can try to use a UPC database to look up UPC  Codes. You can also try the Keyword.com bar code search.

The codes DO make it easier for shoppers to compare prices which can be both good and bad; good because it makes it easy to compare prices and bad because it make is easy to make price the focus when it is NOT what either buyers or sellers should most care about.

This focus on buying cheap is what is destroying our economy and making us all poor! But that is a topic for an entirely different post so see what we can do to change all that is explained in my post Supporting Small Businesses.

This post is about how to buy UPC Codes without overspending or creating issues by buying from the wrong source.

If you have products manufactured that are not unique you are eventually going to need to buy a UPC code for each item if you want to sell at Amazon, on Shopping Comparison sites or in stores.

The very best explanation of the UPC issue is provided by Innovation Hall of Fame Member  George Laurer. Read his information BEFORE you Buy UPC Numbers and what to do if you only need to purchase one UPC number (or a few).

I recommend you use his list of legitimate UPC resellers if you don’t want to register your own.

If you regularly have products manufactured or wish to control the registry of your UPC you should use the official USC registrar GS1US.org. Using them is the only way to have the UPC number registered directly to you.

All sites besides GS1US.org are resellers and the numbers they sell you are registered to them.

The Official GS1US site makes this claim:

“There’s only one U.P.C. barcode that’s accepted by retailers everywhere. And it’s only available from GS1 US.” ~ That is not entirely true ~

Even their own site mentions Solution Partners and articles like this one on buying UPC codes in the Washington Post acknowledge that there are legitimate UPC code resellers where you can buy a few or even buy one UPC code.

There is additional good information in this post about How to Sell your Book at Amazon on Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools site and in the comments there. The information Simply BarCodes published on UPC Codes for Amazon.

I also recommend StartUp Nation’s How to Obtain a UPC Code especially if you are a business selling in traditional brick and mortar stores like Nordstrom or Bloomingdale or any of the other companies that now require them for everything they sell.

If you sell handmade goods or collectibles that do not have UPCs and are unique (one of a kind) follow this UPC advice from SingleFeed:

“Do your best to include these unique identifiers in your product feed, but do not make these numbers up. If you’re selling handmade goods, you will not have MPNs or UPCs. That’s actually ok. If you’re buying your inventory from a distributor/supplier and that product has a real manufacturer, though, you can get MPNs and UPCs. It’s going to take work as not all distributors/suppliers are used to giving out this information, but you have to keep on them to do so.”

This UPC issue is going to affect resellers and merchants on a growing number of channels including Amazon and Google Product Search. See the resources below for additional resources specific to those channels.

SELLING ON AMAZON:

• Amazon Fee & Profit Calculator for Bulk Listings
• Selling on Amazon Now Requires UPC / EIN
• Selling on Amazon Sucks

UPC CODES GOOGLE:

• Official Google Merchant Center: Unique Product Identifiers including Using UPC Codes on Google Product Feeds
• Official Google Base Blog; Google Base MPC, UPC and ISBN Requirements
• LoveYourFeedBlog: Google Base Requiring MPN & UPC for Google Product Search
• How to Improve Rankings on Google Product Search
• Google Product Search Best Practices
• Optimizing Google Product Feeds
• Optimizing Google Base Product Feeds

Get Award Winning Volusion Live Chat Free

If you already have traffic to your ecommerce store (or service business) there is one fast and easy step you can take that can instantly increase sales: Provide instant answers via live chat as many hours as you possibly can. If you don’t have live chat on your site, read on for how you can get hosted live chat absolutely free.

Why should Live Chat make such a large difference? Because shoppers don’t buy until they have confidence that they have the answers they need to make a decision. The faster and more efficiently you answer their questions the sooner they’ll buy. Live Chat closes more sales even on well-designed sites with excellent product descriptions. Be sure to optimize your chat to make it warm and friendly.

Are You Getting the Most out of your existing Live Chat service? Would you like to add excellent hosted Free Chat on your site absolutely free?

• Increase your sales by having someone logged in and available as many hours as humanly possible.
• If you have many employees, train more of them to be able to use your chat service.
• Ensure your chat users have the resources and training required to answer quickly what they can and know what to say when they don’t have an instant answer.
• Make sure all your answers are cheerful, helpful and friendly.

Rethink the Live Chat ICON Size and Position

Where you position your Live Chat function and the size of the graphic used to draw attention to it can have a huge effect on how much it is used. I had a client who accidently bumped their Live Chat function to the top right of their page and made the icon excessively large. This occurred during a redesign and was not intentional.

Sales doubled during the short time the Live Chat icon was large and prominent. They dropped back to “normal” as soon as they moved it back to the bottom of the left column under their product categories. Until their designer’s “mistake” accidentally bumped it to the top right I didn’t even know they had Live Chat – and apparently neither did those shopping on the site!

No Live Chat? Get the Best Hosted Live Chat FREE Now

Volusion offers totally free hosted Live Chat to any Web site that desires it. The free Live Chat version allows one person to be logged into the Live Chat from any location. A small business could log out at work and then back in when they get home.

Be Creative in Manning Your Free Live Chat

• Don’t assume you can’t keep your live chat open longer hours at least for the holidays. You could train friends, family, or employees to work from home answering your live chat. The more they know about your products or services the better. Or you could log in and turn up the volume so you could answer while you’re relaxing in front of the television. The sale you make could make it all worthwhile.
• Be sure you select a Live Chat solution that allows you to log in from an unlimited number of computers. Volusion allows one person to be logged in at a time from anywhere on their free version. They charge for each additional simultaneous log-in. Even though their service is considered one of the very best, their Live Chat pricing is lower than any others I’ve checked. (And you can’t beat free for this quality Live Chat service.)

LIVE CHAT SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS:

• BoldChat – Live Chat Performance Benchmarks
• LivePerson – Their site indicates an 18-20% increase in conversion rates due to live chat. On demand Webinar available.
• Activa Live Chat Proactive Chat

LIVE CHAT SERVICES:

• Increase Ecommerce Conversion Rates with 24×7 Virtual Customer Support and Chat Services

OPTIMIZE LIVE CHAT:

• ecommerceINSIGHTS.com – Let’s Chat About Live Chat for the Holidays
• AutomativeDigitalMarketing -  Why Live Chat
• GrokDotCom by FutureNow – Make Your Live Chat Persuasive
• ClickZ – How to Screw Up Live Customer Chat (And How to Fix It)
• GrokDotCom by Future Now – Quick Tip: Use Live Chat Transcripts to Boost Conversions
• InternetRetailer – Forrester Analyst Shows How Web Retailers Win in Tough Times
• GrokDotCom by FutureNow – 3 Ways to Lose an Online Sale
• GrokDotCom – Warning against Being TOO Aggressive with Live Chat and How to Tell When You’re Being Too Pushy
• Website Magazine – High Impact Tweaks for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

While I’m working on reviews of the book Mastering Google Analytics and their free ten day email course I thought I’d ask for your questions. There must be something you’ve always wanted to know about improving your online store.

Few realize how each small improvement made to a site can greatly impact usability, increase conversions, and maximize revenue. I know because I worked simultaneously in many ecommerce stores and tracked the changes in Web Analytics as we made them.

By comparing the same change across multiple stores it became obvious which made the most difference. That knowledge can now benefit you and your online store. What small change will increase your revenue?

It can be something as simple as the color, size, placement and text on your “Add to Cart” button. “Add to Cart” is far more effective than “Buy Now” because Buy Now requires more commitment than some of your potential buyers are ready to make at that point. Some may be afraid they can’t back out of buying.

It could be something more significant such as upgrading the type of search function you offer.  Have you ever known what you wanted to buy, done a search, and been presented with page after page of unrelated products? What did you do? Most will simply leave and try somewhere else. Fix this one thing and see your sales increase.

What else do you want to know? How good is your search? Would you like me to pop into your store and evaluate it for you? That’s what I’m here for and it costs you nothing. On top of that it might send you some buyers:

Simply leave your questions, requests and link to your store in the comments of this post.

Go ahead and leave a short description of what your business does. All links are do-follow so you’ll also be adding to link-building for your store.

If this proves popular I may offer more expansive free evaluations of e-commerce stores and especially Yahoo! Stores. The more response I get now the more likely that will happen so please tell your friends and favorite online sellers and share this post at Twitter, FriendFeed and other Social Networking sites. Thank you.

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RELATED E-COMMERCE POSTS:

• Why Do So Many Visitors Abandon Shopping Carts? – EXCELLENT post on common mistakes sites make that cause shopping cart abandonment

With online sales expected to decline along with the economy, ecommerce stores will be seeking ways to reduce overhead.  Here are some strategies I have had advertisers implement to reduce costs and increase profitability when using shopping search engines and comparison sites:

When paying for clicks from shopping sites:

1. If possible, remove from that feed inexpensive products that get tons of clicks when the profit margins do not more than cover the income generated.
2. Slightly increase prices on inexpensive items so your products are NOT being featured in the top positions.
3. Slightly decrease prices on high dollar items when you DO want your products to be featured in the top positions.

Don’t assume that all conversions sent by shopping sites are due to that site. Because Google Analytics and most other common analytics programs attribute conversions to the LAST click that buyer made, if someone finds what they want via ppc ad or on your site and then goes to do a price comparison,  the shopping site gets credit for the sale but did not really generate it.