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Frequently Asked Questions
How much will I save opening a Powerful Hosting eStore?
SMALL STORE -
YahooStore vs. Powerful Hosting eStore
Assumptions:
Monthly Sales: $5,000
Click Thru's from Product Submit per month: 1,000
Average Product Submit per-click cost: $0.26
|
Monthly Hosting
|
% of sales fee
|
Total Fee on Sales
|
"Product Submit" fees*
|
TOTAL
Monthly
Cost
|
Yahoo!Store
- Plan 1
|
$299.95
|
0.75%
|
$37.50
|
$260.00
|
$597.45 |
|
Yahoo!Store - Plan 2 |
$99.95
|
1.0%
|
$50.00
|
$260.00 |
$409.95 |
| Yahoo!Store
- Plan 3 |
$39.95
|
1.5%
|
$75.00
|
$260.00 |
$374.95 |
| Powerful Hosting eStore |
$19.95 |
$0.00 |
$0.00 |
$0.00 |
$19.95
|
MEDIUM STORE -
YahooStore vs. Powerful Hosting eStore
Assumptions:
Monthly Sales: $50,000
Click Thru's from Product Submit per month: 7,500
Average Product Submit per-click cost: $0.26
|
Monthly Hosting
|
% of sales fee
|
Total Fee on Sales
|
"Product Submit" fees*
|
TOTAL
Monthly
Cost |
Yahoo!Store
- Plan 1
|
$299.95
|
0.75%
|
$375.00
|
$1950.00
|
$2624.95 |
|
Yahoo!Store - Plan 2 |
$99.95
|
1.0%
|
$500.00
|
$1950.00 |
$2549.95 |
| Yahoo!Store
- Plan 3 |
$39.95
|
1.5%
|
$750.00
|
$1950.00 |
$2739.95 |
| Powerful Hosting eStore |
$39.95 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
$39.95
|
LARGE STORE -
YahooStore vs. Powerful Hosting eStore
Assumptions:
Monthly Sales: $100,000
Click Thru's from Product Submit per month: 15,000
Average Product Submit per-click cost: $0.26
|
Monthly Hosting
|
% of sales fee
|
Total Fee on Sales
|
"Product Submit" fees*
|
TOTAL
Monthly
Cost |
Yahoo!Store
- Plan 1
|
$299.95
|
0.75%
|
$750.00
|
$3900.00
|
$4949.95
|
|
Yahoo!Store - Plan 2 |
$99.95
|
1.0%
|
$1000.00
|
$3900.00 |
$4999.95
|
| Yahoo!Store
- Plan 3 |
$39.95
|
1.5%
|
$1500.00
|
$3900.00 |
$5439.95
|
| Powerful Hosting eStore |
$79.95 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
$79.95
|
What About Yahoo's "Product Submit"?
As a YahooStore owner, you will be forced to participate in the "Product Submit" scheme
and list your products in YahooShopping. You will pay a predetermined click
rate based on the YahooShopping category your products are in. Unlike other
click thru programs like Google or Overture, you will have no control over
the per-click cost OR the amount of money you spend each month. You will
be required to pay whatever Yahoo wants.
Utilizing the Powerful Hosting eStore allows merchants to be in full control of the type and cost of their
marketing expenditures. Our most successful merchants replace the prohibitive cost of the Yahoo "Product
Submit" program with more efficient programs like Google and Overture which provide total control and
lower overall cost. For example, many merchants have large customer bases that provide substantial repeat
business and elect to reduce their clickthru promotional budgets periodically, then increase when necessary.
This is not possible with the Yahoo Product Submit program.
Some
larger merchants are now saving thousands of dollars per month, others
less... but you will reduce the cost of your online presence and have
more valuable features. Remember, you do not pay a
percentage of sales with Powerful Hosting, only a low, monthly hosting
charge.
What is the difference between the YahooStore and Powerful Hosting
store?
Your YahooStore is built on old technology. It is known as a
"published" web site, which means that each product has an individual
page that sits on the server waiting for a customer to go to it.
The information on any given page does not change until you
manually change something in the store manager and re-publish the page.
A Powerful Hosting eStore uses the latest technology - dynamic
templates to create individual pages "on the fly". This provides
tremendous advantages over "published" sites because information is
presented dynamically and can change based on the user allowing the
site to display different data to different users. Many Powerful
Hosting customers use this feature effectively to combine retail and
wholesale business on the same website. In this scenario, retail
customers see retail prices; wholesale customers can log in and the
site automatically displays wholesale information with the appropriate
prices. Wholesalers can even be grouped by discount, so "A"
wholesalers see prices with 50% discounts, "B" wholesalers get 40%, and
so on. Another effective use of dynamic templates is our
real-time inventory feature which displays the actual inventory of a
product on the product page itself.
Should I keep my YahooStore open?
Many Yahoo merchants choose to maintain both their YahooStore and a
Powerful Hosting store. Because opening a Powerful Hosting store
is so inexpensive, there are primarily two reasons that merchants
choose to do this:
1. move a portion of the traffic to the Powerful Hosting store -
maintain a presence on Yahoo and do some portion of sales on PH
reducing the 4% drain imposed by Yahoo
2. maintain a backup store. Many merchants are concerned with Yahoo's
heavy handedness and would like to recreate their data and store
elsewhere so they can't be held hostage. Powerful Hosting allows
you to do this very inexpensively. And - Powerful Hosting
provides you with a real
database for your product data that you can download or ODBC link to.
I don't want to make the jump all at once, can I test the Powerful
Hosting store?
You can build a Powerful Hosting store for as little as $19.95 per
month (up to 10 products) with a one-time setup fee of $49.95.
You may cancel at any time, there are no contracts to sign or
long term committments. And... your data belongs to you and can
be downloaded.
Will I lose the traffic YahooStore! is generating now?
Is Yahoo really generating traffic? Try this; select the top
5 most popular items you sell in your store and go to Yahoo!Shopping.
In the "Search for" window, enter a search the way a typical
consumer would do it, like "cd player" or "Ralph Lauren". Where
does your store appear in the search results? Are you getting
your money's worth for the large fees you're paying when Yahoo promotes
your biggest competitors on the first page of the search results and
you're buried in hundreds or thousands of other sites 20 pages down?
Here are some sample YahooStore search results for a number of items
typically offered by merchants:
Search
Results for cd player found 1605
stores with 36191 products
Search Results for Ralph Lauren found 168 stores with 4540
products
Search Results for supplement found 1173 stores with 68577
products
Search Results for apparel found 556 stores with 25771
products
How do I convert my
YahooStore to a Powerful Hosting store?
Getting your store up on Powerfu Hosting is easy. We have
developed a remarkable computer program that spiders your YahooStore,
downloads all the data and images, creates a real database, and
automatically rebuilds the store on Powerful Hosting's cutting edge
platform. This process - and the algorithm to accomplish it - is
extremely complex. If your YahooStore department structure is
configured in an unusual way, i.e. multiple departments with the same
items and different department names, etc. it is possible that some of
the work will require human intervention. Powerful Hosting can
provide assistance if necessary and will notify you if it appears that
your store falls in this category to discuss the project.
Additionally, the new store will be configured with a "standard"
Yahoo store look - buttons on the left with top level departments,
sub-departments in the center with text links.
The Powerful Hosting store provides unlimited graphic design
flexibility and it is possible to mirror exactly the configuration and graphic look of any YahooStore. Merchants who
wish to duplicate the look and function of a custom designed YahooStore
need an understanding of HTML and our iTML database tag language.
A Developer's Manual is available at no cost. Powerful
Hosting also provides assistance in custom configurations through it's
affiliate designer/developer network who are experts in the use of our
technology.
Can I use my current Merchant Account?
Probably. If your current Merchant Account uses one of the
following gateways for processing, your Powerful Hosting store will
link directly: AuthorizeNet, PaymentTech, IONgate, PSIgate, Verisign
Payflow or USAePay. We can also establish a new Merchant Account
for you through USAePay without incurring setup fees or gateway fees.
We can also establish links to any gateway that utilizes the FDMS
Nashville or Vital verification platforms at a nominal setup fee.
Do I need to have my product information in a database to build a new
store?
No, but if your product information is in database format (Excel,
Access, or CVS) all the better, you can upload your data directly or
establish and ODBC link directly to your Access database.
Otherwise, your data can be imported directly from your
Yahoostore with our importer program.
Will I have a database of my product information when I"m done?
Yes. This is an important feature of the Powerful Hosting
eStore. We believe that you should not be held hostage to a
hosting company and once your store is created, you will have all your
product information in database format that you own.
Will I lose search engine ranking?
No. Many merchants are concerned that once all the pages of their
Yahoo site are indexed by the search engines they will lose their
position because the new pages on Powerful Hosting will have different
URL's. To prevent this we have developed special technology that
maps your old URL's to the new ones. The transition to the new
eStore is seamless, and your position in the search engines will be
secure.
Will dynamic pages be spidered by the search engines?
Yes. There is some evidence that search engines avoid page addresses
with question marks in them. Question marks are used by some
dynamic e-commerce applications. Powerful Hosting pages will be
spidered by the search engines and it is impossible for them to
distingush between a typical HTML page and a Powerful Hosting dynamic
page.
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