Before Dave Deasy launched his own online business, he had helped run the online businesses of some industry heavyweights. He started Hewlett Packard's consumer Web business, then he took a job with AOL as head of its small business group.
So in 2003, he had to choose the e-commerce platform for his own business, MyFavoriteCity, which sells gift baskets.
"I was already pretty familiar with the offerings out there," he says. That experience led him to pick Yahoo! Store.
Product bundling and cost were the most important factors in his decision. Namely, he sought an all-in-one solution. Yahoo! offered "not only the Web site building tools, but also the hosting and the shopping cart," he says.
Also important, "it was a relatively low investment, about $50 a month, and no upfront contracts required," Deasy says -- a fact that gave the small company some freedom. "If for some reason we weren't happy with the service, we weren't locked in with a long term contract."
The intuitive nature of Yahoo!'s site building software enabled him to build his site's foundation himself. To jazz it up, he hired Monitus, a San Francisco-based Web design firm that specializes in Yahoo! stores.
Easy Backend
Yahoo!'s backend order fulfillment system is efficient, Deasy says. He has set up the system so that he receives a fax as well as an e-mail when a customer places an order. He then logs into the order control panel, verifies the order and marks it with a ship date. At this point, the Yahoo! platform automatically sends an e-mail to the customer with that ship date. This e-mail contains an URL that allows customers to check the status of their orders.
Deasy completes the process by clicking the sale button on the PaymenTech software -- the credit card merchant account provider that works closely with Yahoo! -- and the customer's account is debited.
He processes several orders per day to ensure rapid delivery. "We try to ship things either same day or next day."
Analytics and Marketing, Too
Deasy uses Yahoo!'s visitor analytics software to track sales trends over time. "You can slice and dice the data on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and you can search by product to see how various products are doing," he says. "It's a pretty reasonable analytics package considering it's included in the base subscription price."
Deasy also takes advantage of a marketing tool that Yahoo! offers, Yahoo! Shopping Mall. Yahoo! lists MyFavoriteCity's gift baskets in its well-trafficked mall, charging Deasy on a pay-per-click basis. "All you do is go into Yahoo! Shopping and say 'yes, I would like to have my products listed,' and they do all the work behind the scenes."
He supplements this marketing by buying search engine keywords in Overture, which is owned by Yahoo!. Deasy keeps MyFavoriteCity listed among the top search results by monitoring his bid in Overture, which lists the amounts of other bids so he can bid competitively. Most of his keywords -- like "San Francisco gifts" -- cost 25 cents to 50 cents per click.
However, one aspect of the Yahoo! platform he would like to see improved is its documentation. While most of the platform is intuitive, "other parts aren't as easy to use and aren't as well documented -- they could continue to fine-tune some of the ease-of-use issues."
That quibble aside, Deasy is satisfied with the Yahoo! system. "For a small business, it probably can't be beat."
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| MyFavoriteCity.com uses Yahoo! for its e-commerce management system. |
| Vital Statistics |
| Name: |
MyFavoriteCity.com |
| Founded: | 2003 |
| Sales/revenues: | Target = $1.0M - $1.5M over next 12 months |
| Content management/storefront system: | Yahoo! Store |
| Visitor analytics system: | Yahoo! Store |
| Hosting Provider: | Yahoo! |
| Affiliate technology provider: | Yahoo! |
| Payment Solutions: | PaymentTech |
| Number of employees: | 4 |
| Number of tech staff: | 1 part-time, consultants as needed |
| Key strategies: | • Consolidate operations on a single e-commerce platform
• Ship early and often
• Aggressive search marketing. |
James Maguire is a contributor to eCommerce-Guide.com. His column appears every Friday.
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