It’s official: Yahoo! Small Business will be rolling out a new marketing dashboard, built especially for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). Now, Yahoo! Store merchants will have access to a well-crafted tool set designed especially to help SMBs stay ahead of the pack online.
The official release was discussed in a mediapost.com article announcing to readers that:
Yahoo Small Business will introduce the Marketing Dashboard for SMBs, filled with free features and premium paid services to analyze metrics and competitive analysis, as well as monitor online reputations and site performance. A new tool will allow SMBs to maintain business listings across the Web, so consumers searching for company names can find consistent information.
…As part of a dashboard toolkit, Yahoo will support a new directory service, similar to the one offered by Localeze. The feature allows SMBs to monitor directory information about their company across the Web. It relies on the Yahoo directory as a template for information. A tab in the dashboard monitors local business listings based on the description.
While recent press, like this Forbes article, Yahoo! Restructures To Focus On Online Media, Social And E-Commerce, has suggested that Yahoo! would be focusing more on targeting and expanding small and medium sized businesses, especially with e-commerce, but who knew its product offerings would be rolling out this fast!?
If Yahoo! wants to remain profitable (which we all want too), then they’ll be likely to follow the money, like the earlier reference mediapost.com article suggests:
Supporting SMBs has become a “highly profitable and attractive business,” according to Tom Byun, GM at Yahoo Small Business. He estimates that Yahoo supports about 1.5 million SMB customers, along with about $3 billion in ecommerce sales from its merchant product line.
Frankly, it’s good to see the attention to innovation, and surely Yahoo! Store merchants must be glad to see the efforts. We’ve gotten word from a little bird that there’s more to come, so keep your eyes peeled for future news flashes!
