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Step 6 of 11 < Prev | Next >

Step 6:  Start building your store!

What store design tool would you like to use?

  • The Store Editor, available in the Store Control Panel, is an easy-to-use, web-based tool appropriate for those with limited experience creating web pages or for those who want to get a small store up-and-running quickly. With the Store Editor, site building is as easy as filling out online forms and choosing from pre-defined styles for your site. However, if you are familiar with HTML, you can take the Store Editor to the next level by learning to create customized templates using RTML, our proprietary coding language.
  • Yahoo! SiteBuilder is our free, downloadable web design software that runs on Windows-based computers and makes it easy for users of all levels to build professional web sites fast. You get more than 380 customizable web site templates, royalty-free graphics, a navigation button builder, precise layout control, and much more. Plus, only SiteBuilder includes a store wizard that allows you to create an entire e-commerce site, or individual merchandising pages, in minutes. No prior HTML experience is required, but you can write your own code if you want to. And publishing is as easy as clicking a button. Take a tour.

    Note: SiteBuilder is recommended only for merchants with a limited number of products (less than 20) or infrequent updates. With SiteBuilder, if you make edits to your layout or links to new sections, you must make the changes to each page. With Store Editor, if you make changes to design, layout, or links, Store Editor automatically makes the changes to all pages, making Store Editor a more manageable solution for larger stores.
  • Third-party web site editing tools. With Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, you have the flexibility to work with your favorite web design software like Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. We even offer a Dreamweaver extension that allows you to create web pages using product information from your Merchant Solutions product catalog. Please note that third-party tools like FrontPage or Dreamweaver require a separate purchase and are supported by their respective manufacturers, not Yahoo!. The Merchant Solutions Extension for Dreamweaver is a free download, and includes help integrated into the application. More information about how FrontPage works with Yahoo! Merchant Solutions is available in the Web Hosting Control Panel.
  • Advanced publishing options. To create an even more interactive and dynamic online store, advanced scripting and database tools, such as PHP, Perl and MySQL are available in all Merchant Solutions plans. You can access these tools in the Web Hosting Control Panel.
  • Hire a web site designer to do it for you. If you're feeling overwhelmed and prefer to have someone else set up your store, we make it easy to find local web designers. Visit our Designer Directory to learn more.
Quickly design your store pages
No matter what design tool you choose, you can take advantage of Yahoo! Merchant Solutions layouts to help you speed up the site building process. Yahoo! Merchant Solutions provides several customizable layouts in the Store Tag Hub area that you can easily copy and paste into your preferred web design tool. These layouts can help you quickly create a product or section page, and include "order now" buttons that are pre-programmed to insert products into the customer's shopping cart when clicked.

Also, we make it easy to create a complete set of customer checkout pages (including a shopping cart, shipping form, billing form, and an order confirmation page). You just need to answer a few questions and the pages are automatically built by Yahoo! Merchant Solutions (see Step 7 for more information).

Automatically access product information from the Catalog Manager
When designing your site in an HTML editing tool, you can use "Store Tags" to populate your pages with product information contained in your Catalog Manager. Store Tags are special pieces of HTML code that access your Catalog Manager data and display it on your web site. You can look up Store Tags for specific products in the Store Tag Hub area of the Store Control Panel. Any time you publish changes to your Catalog Manager, they are automatically reflected wherever Store Tags are used to display product information on your site.

More information on using Store Tags is available in the Store Tag Hub.

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