Perhaps due to the economy (traditional business is down while ecommerce is up), we have more beginner merchants than ever before calling about how to start an internet business. Many of those haven’t committed to the Yahoo! Store platform and are “just shopping around.” When we ask, “Why consider a Yahoo! Store as you plan
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How to Conduct Effective Research Polls on Facebook
Targeted public polls are nothing new, but conducting them as part of a social media marketing strategy is gaining traction among retailers. There are a number of nifty apps. (with free and premium service offerings) that allow retailers to conduct polls on Facebook including: Poll , Poll Daddy , Poll for Facebook ; along with
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2011 Reports: U.S. Online Sales Finally Making a Substantive Come-back
Like a boomerang cast low over the sands of no-man’s land, online sales spun into a dismal state of abeyance, with the rest of the U.S. economy…and just as the boomerang doesn’t disappoint on the return flight, online sales marked a turning point this past Black Friday with the best gains since 2007. According to
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GSX: Some Yahoo! Store Merchants See 5-10% Increase When They Go International
About a year ago, a number of FastPivot’s Yahoo! Store clients began asking about how to do international business from their Yahoo! Stores. Coincidentally, we were having meetings with GlobalShopEx.com around the same time, and were able to connect those merchants seamlessly with a global solution they have since found convenient and profitable. Even the
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Why One Yahoo! Store Merchant is Losing $1400 a Week
A small Yahoo! Store ecommerce business that once pulled in $1600 a week and drops to $200 a week is analogous to a bricks-and-mortar style demolition. We talked to one such Yahoo! store merchant a while back who told us this very thing happened to them, almost overnight. Over the summer, everything was going fine,
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No Need to Pay Custom Traffic Cops for Yahoo! Store 301 Redirects Anymore
Good news for Yahoo! Store merchants: Following an official Yahoo! store update, there is now no need to pay a custom development agency to handle your Yahoo! Store 301 redirects. As recently as August of 2011, Yahoo! Store merchants were coming to us (FastPivot.com) to request custom Yahoo! Store 301 redirects, as there was at
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Social Media Users More Like Flower-Pickers Than Hunters
Online retailers have been desperately searching for ways to crack the social commerce code. Everyone knows that internet users are more likely to be online interacting through their social media accounts, instead of just logging onto the internet to find what they need. Many people are spending most of their day interacting on social media,
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State Sales Tax Bill for Ecommerce Closer to Passing, Now With Amazon's Blessing
For years ecommerce merchants, especially larger ones like Amazon.com, have been hassled by a growing number of states in the USA about charging sales tax on purchases by customers located in states where merchants aren’t physically located. However, just because ecommerce merchants have been hassled to set up a system that will add state taxes
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Google's Newest Search Update Leaves Some Ecommerce Merchants Crying
For merchants who enjoy putting their store websites on auto-pilot and sitting back to watch the sales come in, it is time to weep. That time is over, at least for merchants selling “fresh” product dependent on Google indexing. According to an official November 3rd, 2011 Google blog update: Given the incredibly fast pace at
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Expect to Lose Holiday Sales, If Your Yahoo! Store Isn't Mobile Commerce Ready
The holidays are a make or break time for many Yahoo! Store merchants. For some, the entire year is planned around just a couple of months of frenzied holiday shopping. Year-in and year-out, the planning cycle has remained the same–everyone knows what they should be doing to ramp up for the big time of year.
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