It has been quite awhile since I’ve looked at some of the available all-in-one eCommerce solutions. But lately, I’ve received several questions from readers who are finding themselves a bit hesitant about the whole website setup process and are looking at all inclusive eCommerce packages. This particular reader is considering using Yahoo Merchant Solutions and wanted to know my thoughts.

I wanted your opinion on the Yahoo merchant solutions. I know you said eBay stores are not the way to go. I completely understand why, especially after doing some research. But I was looking at the yahoo merchant solutions, and they charge a monthly fee to do all the hosting as well as charge a 1.5% of all gross sales. It seems like they offer a lot of services, including good customer support, for the price. I am pretty computer literate, but have never built a website. I’m concerned a little about the learning curve. I was wondering if you have heard any feedback or have knowledge of Yahoo! Merchant solutions and what they have to offer. Basically, I am trying to figure out whether to go the all-in-one route, or do and learn everything on my own.

The Good

Having considered Yahoo Merchant Solutions in the past for our online store, I do know that Yahoo is one of the best all in one ecommerce solutions out there. In fact, many of our top competitors run Yahoo stores and several of them make far more money than we do.

The main advantage is that Yahoo practically takes care of everything for you. They host your online store for you on their world class webservers. They provide you with access to their fully featured shopping cart solution. They even help you design your online web storefront. And all of this comes at a fairly reasonable price of $39.95/month for their starter package. In addition to this monthly fee, they also charge a very reasonable 1.5% fee off your gross sales.

Here are the advantages that are immediately obvious from using Yahoo over an open source ecommerce solution.

• They offer tools and templates to help you design your online storefront.
• Their shopping cart is already search engine optimized and easy to implement.
• They offer reliable web hosting for your online store
• You have access to their fully featured shopping cart solution which is powerful and offers many bells and whistles
• You get 24/7 technical support from Yahoo. If your website goes down, Yahoo will make sure that it gets up and running right away. You are not responsible for the uptime of your site.
• They help you take care of credit card and payment processing. You don’t have to worry about your servers being PCI compliant
• They provide you with access to powerful analytics for your website

In short, Yahoo Merchant Solutions is an excellent choice if you don’t want to deal with the mechanics of putting up your own website and setting up the necessary infrastructure. You don’t have to have any prior knowledge of web programming or how to set up a server at all. Everything just works under the domain of your choice.

The Bad

Everyone is scared of the unknown. If you don’t know anything about how to set up a website or an online store, signing up for a service like Yahoo Merchant Solutions can be extremely tempting.

However it’s important to realize that once you sign up and establish your store using Yahoo, you are essentially tied to their service. And at that point, Yahoo has gotten you pregnant. You can not easily leave because that means switching to a completely different ecommerce platform.

You can not easily move to a different shopping cart because all of the links to your products have already been firmly entrenched in the search engines. You can not easily leave because you don’t know how to leave. Yahoo has done everything for you so you possess very little knowledge about how websites work.

Meanwhile if the going ever gets tough, they have the upper hand and can change their policies and terms of use at any time. If they are under pressure to make their earnings for the quarter, they can jack up their rates. Their prices may appear inexpensive for now, but they will definitely increase over time. If Yahoo were to one day decide that their eCommerce solutions were no longer profitable or they were to get acquired, they could close up shop and leave your store in the dark.

By signing up for a service like Yahoo Merchant Solutions, you are essentially handing over the platform of your business to someone else. And at that point, you don’t really have full control of your store anymore except for the domain.

Should I Stay Away Then?

Whether or not you should sign up for Yahoo Merchant Solutions entirely depends on your skill set and your motivation to pick up new things. If you are completely computer illiterate and you have no desire to learn about website programming, then go with Yahoo. If you want to get up and running right away and not have to deal with setting up your shopping cart, then go with Yahoo. If you want something that is proven and works right out of the box, then go with Yahoo.

Just keep in mind that basing your store on a proprietary platform will make it difficult to switch services in the future. That being said, I know of many successful online stores that run on Yahoo’s ECommerce Solutions. Yahoo is definitely a powerful and feature rich platform.

In the end, it comes down to personal preference. When my wife and I opened our store, I was highly motivated to become self-sufficient so I learned how to program php and analyzed the nuts and bolts of various open source shopping carts. Ultimately, I wanted to be in control of my own destiny and I wanted to minimize paying unnecessary fees to third party providers.

In reality, you can’t go wrong either way and it’s a tradeoff between flexibility vs ease of use. Being able to say that I have access to my shopping cart source code is very important to me. But if you don’t mind being tied to a service, Yahoo is an excellent option.

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