Yahoo Stores eCommerce Platform
Mid-Market and Enterprise Retailers require efficient integration between their website and their backend systems. An eCommerce platform is generally the best way to accomplish this tall order.
What Is An eCommerce Platform?
The technology of eCommerce continues to increase so this term is not necessarily one-size-fits all. A few years ago it was enough for an online-shopping solution to handle online catalogs and transactions. The latest eCommerce platforms provide complete backend functionality such as integration with shipping, receiving, billing, fulfillment, and inventory.
Further customizations include features such as personalization and content management, specialized business-to-business capabilities, and infrastructures built for scalability and reliability. Certain platforms can actually take the place of shipping, receiving and order fulfillment.
Yahoo Stores eCommerce Platform
The Yahoo Stores platform (also known as Yahoo Merchant Solution and Yahoo eCommerce) has changed names since its creation in 1998 but it remains a solid (if aging) eCommerce Platform for many mid-sized retailers. Yahoo Stores solutions are a fully-hosted ecommerce platform which provide merchants with all they need to build, manage and promote their products. Yahoo hosts more than 45,000 stores of various sizes, including some of the top 500 Internet Retailer stores from around the US. Needless to say, this is a significant player in the market.
However, Yahoo Stores does have a few draw-backs from a development and search engine optimization standpoint.
- Development - Yahoo Stores are hosted internally and most of their stores are built on a proprietary RTML language. Although RTML is similar to ASP, it requires a developer to attain full reward. The hosting solution is built around redundancy and it can make for slow load times. We circumvent issues by loading images and scripts from a separate image server.
- Search Engine Optimization - Yahoo has many SEO-specific functions that plug you directly into many search engines so it is better than most but the platform is not completely SEO-friendly. Store owners are unable to specify directory structure, sitemapping, or dynamic (remarketing) content.
We've optimized a number of large Yahoo Store implementations to a great degree of success. Regardless of any drawbacks the Yahoo Store brings to the table, we are able to attain fast load times and high organic search engine placement.
Contact us today to talk about your Yahoo cart. We will be able to quickly talk you through any issues you may be facing with your current store.
Contact us today