Ramblings from “The Mad Wizard” about eCommerce, Yahoo! Stores and other random thoughts

As many of you already know, Yahoo! is phasing out the older versions of checkout and now requiring everyone to switch over to Checkout Manager. If you are using an older version of checkout, you will see a message like the one below:

“Your store is using an older version of checkout, which we will be retiring later this year, on August 15, 2008. Until June 30, 2008, you will be able to test your checkout using Checkout Manager, with the option to rollback if you encounter any problems. After June 30, you will no longer be able to rollback to older versions of checkout once Checkout Manager is enabled. Please consult our migration help for more information.”

So if you’re like many store owners who haven’t upgraded you’re wondering what’s involved, what has to be done, and how do I make sure not to break my store in the process. Yahoo has information on their site but hopefully some of the information in this blog post will help. There may be a follow up entry at some point when I also figure out all the points that people are wondering about that I haven’t mentioned.

Now on to the meat of the information.

First, you need to know that checkout manager in regards to the basics of branding boil down to three primary areas. These are your header, side navigation and footer. There are also items such as colors, fonts and buttons which also can be changed. But unlike the previous checkouts which had a cart page that was directly connected to the store editor because the RTML generated the framework around your cart page, checkout manager doesn’t have any direct connection to the store editor. So as a general rule the html on your pages will be static.

Now I’m not going to go into all the particulars quite yet on every setting in checkout manager as that’s a bit overwhelming, but at least I can give you some of the basics of what’s involved on moving your branding over. Obviously we have a Checkout Manager Implementation Service as do many other store designers, but I want to give some information for those of you that want to give it a crack on your own.

Most importantly remember that you can always test before going live the first time so this gives you the flexibility to try it all out on your own. To test go to Checkout Manager in the store manager, and click on the link for “Test your Checkout Manager Settings”. After you set the cookie by following the steps you’ll have to publish your checkout settings (and possibly your store) but then when you checkout from that computer it will go through checkout manager while everyone else still gets the old checkout.

So now other than the basic settings of how many pages, what pages to show, etc. What things do I need to transfer in, and how do I do it?

Well to start with the major sections first, you’re going to need to get the html from your site’s header, side nav and footer. Obviously if you don’t care to move some of these things into the checkout process you don’t have to get that html. Each of these different blocks of html are going to need to have some reworking done (more about that later) and each will then be placed in the appropriate area in Checkout Manager - Global Settings - Checkout Wrapper and in the Checkout Regions section you’ll see boxes for each.

Now it would be great if I could simply view the source of my live page, copy the html for each area, and paste it in. Unfortunately it’s not quite that simple. The main issues are going to be link URLs, source URLs for files such as images, and CSS you may need.

For the link urls you’re going to want to review every A (link) tag in your html. All links should be hard coded full links such as http://www.yourstorewizards.com/accordion-nav.html so it has the full url. Relative links such as /accordion-nav.html won’t work since the checkout process and cart are at a different domain than your own. So make sure to catch them all.

For the files that are referenced, primarily images, you want to look for any src attributes on the tags. For each file the simplest answer is to get every image, save it on your computer, and upload it to the FILES section in the store editor (and make sure to publish the staged files when you’re done). Some of the files will already be there and so for those you can skip this step, but for those that aren’t you want to get them there. Once they’re all up, go through your html and make sure any src references are RELATIVE. Yes, the exact opposite of the links. So you want the src to look like something like “/lib/XXXXXXX/abc.gif” (where XXXXXX is your store account id). The main reason for this is so the images will get served AND they can be pulled correctly either from a secure or non-secure page without getting any warnings.

Now depending on your layout you may have CSS that’s required to stylize your header, nav, or footers. Unfortunately this isn’t something that is quite as cut and dried. Depending on your store version and how it’s coded it can be in an external file (or files) or inline in your html. So for now I’m going to have to assume you can at least find any css you need. Once you have it you have a couple of choices (after you make sure any image references in the css are also RELATIVE).

1. You can place it inline in the header in your checkout wrapper area (just wrap it with the needed <style> </style> tags).

2. You can put a link tag to pull a file (which you’ve put in your files section if you’ve been paying attention), such as:

<LINK rel=“stylesheet” type=“text/css” name=“mystyles” href=“/lib/XXXXXXXXXXX/styles.css”>

3. You could get really adventurous and go to Checkout Manager - Visual Customization and go to a completely custom style sheet. This is NOT for the faint of heart and in most cases it’s overkill.

Now I’ve already rambled a lot and there’s much more that you can do in checkout manager, but at least getting these 3 key sections over will get your look much more like your site. But f you find that the look isn’t coming out right for any of your sections, make sure to check out your html. Issues with open/closing tags, improper html, html that shouldn’t be included, etc. can all cause various issues. There can be other things like CSS problems, html that isn’t xhtml compliant, etc. but at least this gets you started.

One thing you will want to make sure to copy over before going live is the text and possibly scripts from your current checkout. So make sure to go to the old checkout settings and copy over what you need, but just be forewarned that if you have scripts that report sales amounts or information or floating cart coding, those will need to be updated for the new checkout. Obviously that’s beyond this post but just so you know in advance before you start having affiliates complaining that sales aren’t getting reported.

That’s it for now and let me know the various questions or things you’d like to see if/when I come back for round two on upgrading to Checkout Manager and other things you should look at.

Well today’s post is all about images.  We all know that in your Yahoo! Store you can edit any item and manually upload images.  We’ve all done it, and we all don’t care for doing it over, and over, and over, and over again.  It’s a very simple system to use, but what do you do if you have hundreds or thousands of images to load?

The first choice everyone turns to is using the bulk image upload tool in your store.  Simply go to your Store Editor and go to the Controls page (if you don’t see Controls try clicking the small red right arrow to get to the advanced editor).  Then in there you’ll see a link for Multiple Image Upload.  Click on it and you can upload a zip file (compressed folder if you’re using windows built in compression) with your images.

There are some requirements you can see at Yahoo’s Help page at http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/context/context-24.html

Basically it boils down to the images must be jpg, gif, png or tiff and the filename portion of the file must match each item’s ID.  So if the image in the file is abc.jpg then the image will get loaded on the item with an ID of abc (basically drop the extension off the file and the id must match that).

This will load the images on to the main IMAGE property of each item in the store.

Okay, so many of you even know this already but I wanted to make sure to explain it all for those that are having issues with this.

But what if you want to load images on to the insets? Or icons? Or even a custom image property, for example inset1 or some other custom property you’ve created?  Can it be done?  The answer is YES.

It used to be that there wasn’t a way to do it and so I actually created a program to do it.  It was our Graphic Uploader but luckily that’s not even needed if you aren’t afraid to get your hands dirty with a database upload (Help in Yahoo is at http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/edit/advanced/advanced-18.html).

So here’s the down and dirty on the workaround, trick, cheat, or whatever you want to call it.

Basically by default the bulk image upload facility attaches images to items based on the ID of the item matching the base filename of the image.  Well the bulk image upload facility also can compare the base filename of the image against data you upload in the database upload file.  So what you need to do is create a database upload file that lists the filename of the image you want connected (without the extension) and load that data in a column/field that is titled the image property you want it to load in.  This sounds more complex than it actually is, so let’s look at an example.

Let’s say I’ve got 3 items I want to load images for but I want to load them on the INSET property, not the main IMAGE property.   And for our examples sake we’ll say that the ids are ABC1, ABC2 and ABC3 and we’ve named our images abc1-inset.jpg, abc2-inset.gif and notherinset.png (just to mix it up).

So our database upload file would look like:

id,inset
abc1,abc1-inset
abc2,abc2-inset
abc3,anotherinset

Once we have that file then all we need to do is use the database upload feature built into the store editor by going to Database Upload and uploading the file (make sure to use ADD not rebuild) and then zipping the images and using the built in bulk image upload feature.  It’s actually worked to also load in the reverse order by using the bulk image upload then the database upload, but in my mind the database upload then image upload makes more sense.

When Yahoo processes the bulk image upload file it will look and tie the filenames to the filenames used in the database upload file and attach them to the correct locations.

There are a few caveats that you’ll want to watch out for just to be safe and to be sure all goes well.

1. Make sure your image filenames don’t match any existing item ids.  This way Yahoo won’t accidentally attach the image to another product you weren’t expecting.  I always end my images with -inset or -icon or -whatever so that I’m sure they’re different.
2. Make sure after your database upload to check the CONTENTS field on your home page if you aren’t loading a path property.  Yahoo will frequently add the items to the contents of the home page when you don’t give a path in the upload. So just edit the home page, look at the CONTENTS box, and then look towards the end of what’s in the box and you can remove them and save.
3. Some users have seen where if they load the same image on multiple items (through the same filename) and then they delete one of the items it causes the images on all the items to get removed.  I haven’t actually tested and confirmed this so don’t know if it always happens or if there is any timeframe on it happening, but just FYI.   If you want to avoid this risk just make sure every image you upload gets it’s own filename and you should be good.

Hopefully this helps someone out there figure out the best way to handle their images.  With being able to bulk upload, yahoo’s new image handling options, and some creative RTML, you can pretty much do whatever you want with images in the store now…and not have to spend hours clicking on the IMAGE button to do it

Okay, so everyone in the world has a blog, and I guess this is our entry into that world. Besides simply being too busy, I really didn’t want to just throw a bunch of words out there without any value. My goal with this blog is not just to give you my random thoughts, but to actually write articles of interest and value. I want this blog to be a resource of information. So I’d like to get input on what topics you’d like discussed either by posting here on the blog itself, or you can drop me an email.

Now I guess I should start out with a little information about myself. Most of you reading this probably already know me or my work, but for those that don’t, here’s probably more information than you wanted to know.

My name is Don Cole, and I’m the self proclaimed “Mad Wizard” behind YourStoreWizards.com . I haven’t always been “The Mad Wizard,” but depending on who you talk to, I’ve always been a little bit on the quirky side. Always a geek, just not always geeky.

I started working on computers and programming back in 1982, and my world was never the same since then. I’ve programmed in numerous languages, a number of different databases, and through all of it the challenge of problem solving on a daily basis is what has always made it fun and exciting for me.

Then back in 1999 I decided that I should be making money on the Internet. After all, wasn’t any self respecting geek supposed to? So I poked around for ideas, which by the way I’m always full of lots of them, and decided to open my first store. At the time I knew virtually nothing about eCommerce, and while researching my choices I came across the old Yahoo! Store Owners Club. I quickly joined, posted my newbie questions, and soon found a home for my store. Not only because of Yahoo’s capabilities, but also in large part because of the club and the other helpful store owners.

Little did I know that within 2 years, I’d be moderating the Store Owners Club, and due to all kinds of changes, we’d slowly transition, transform, and grow into what is now the Your Store Forums. I’ve dealt with all kinds of issues, but most importantly I’ve learned so much over the past 9 years as part of the group (has it been that long). With over 260,000 posts and growing, it’s amazing how much you can learn from reading that much.

Well, soon after joining the group and operating my store, I got tired of all the tedious work. Being a programmer, I decided to find a way to automate. I hate doing anything more than twice. So, soon afterwards I started Y Store Tools which offered software to help automate operating a Yahoo! store.

As I saw opportunities and ways to help out store owners, we expanded into other offerings that could help out. RTML Templates and add-ons, which was a small market at the time, became a good portion of our business, in large part due to my creating the RTML template transfer utility, which allowed templates to be downloaded, uploaded, and created offline. The geek in me loved creating the first multi breadcrumbs template for Yahoo! Stores, all on my laptop in excel, while I was sitting in parking lot. Of course Yahoo’s added new commands to make it much easier (probably because of how draining my template had to be on their servers), but at the time it was exciting to me.

A few years back we started doing data backups and data feeds for Yahoo! Stores. Not only for shopping comparison engines like Google Products/Google Base/Froogle, Shopping.com, etc. but for affiliate programs, RSS feeds, Alternative shopping portals (Amazon, Shop.com and others), and just about anything you can do with the data. We’ve got a system built now so I can pretty much build a feed for just about anything and make it do whatever we need it to. With over 100 different data formats, it’s quite a data geek’s playground. I love being able to not only add a new format for a customer within a few hours but to be able to take existing ones and tweak them to maximize the data specific for that customer. But, I digress.

Well back in 2006 we changed from Y Store Tools to Your Store Wizards. We’re still focused on helping out store owners, providing data feeds, RTML and other automation and information needs, but with the new branding we get to have a bit of fun with it as well. As anyone who has worked with us knows, we’re incredibly capable but also very down to earth when it comes to communicating with us. We’re proud of our Yahoo! Ratings as well as the Reviews we have on the Forums.

I love helping out store owners, and there’s never quite a rush as being able to race in and save the day when they need help. Hopefully this blog will just be another way for all this information in my head to get out and help someone out there.

I’m sure there’s more I could say but I’ve already written more than I expected to. Keep an eye out as I’m going to start off with a few topics that come up often in the forums (image uploading, database uploads, Google Analytics, and others). Please let me know what you’d like to learn about, what information would help you out, and basically what craziness you want to hear me ramble about.

Don “The Mad Wizard” Cole