Custom Yahoo! Stores aren’t like Frankensteins, muscled together by mad amateurs blowing around RTML smokescreens to blind clients from the true ease of setting up shop. Custom developed Yahoo! Stores live up to their names, sometimes to the merchant’s dismay.
For example, let’s say a merchant just had a Yahoo! Store agency design the baddest shop in town. That merchant probably just spent 20 grand on a world class store, so it should be ready for any upgrades or custom programming you want? Yes and no. There are always a lot of factors to consider when it comes to re-figuring a Yahoo! Store. One big IF is whether you are asking the original Yahoo! Store architect to go in and make some changes OR whether you’ve moved on to another agency.
If you’re no longer using your original custom Yahoo! Store developers, then getting upgrades done to your Yahoo! Store can be tricky. First, another development agency has to assess the code to see what’s possible–the greatest worry being that the developers might go in to do something simple and accidentally change one thing that ruins the whole store.
Sure, there are Yahoo! Store development agencies who do the Frankenstein “chop shop” thing– adding an “arm” here or an “ear” there– but the best Yahoo! Store development companies like to come along side clients and provide solutions throughout the lifecycle of a store.
We’ve seen where clients who have tried to save a few bucks jump around from developer to developer to take advantage of the best deals. This is really where it’s easy to see how the Frankenstein store takes a truly distorted shape–section pages may all be different, or storewide glitches and interference may rear their ugly heads. Once this happens, any reputable developer will likely turn and run–there’s nothing like a Frankenstein store chasing you down…no one wants to deal with that kind of beast!
To be fair, there are respectable Yahoo! Store agencies that will take simple, small jobs, such as adding a homepage image rotator or something similar that isn’t likely to be affected by “toxic” leftover code. The best way for Yahoo! Store merchants who want to use a new Yahoo! Store dev. agency to dodge “Frankenstein” is to approach the project with a holistic, long view in mind. So, instead of shopping Yahoo! Store agencies based on price alone, evaluate them on whether their core competencies allow full lifecycle support at the highest development levels possible.
