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By Iravati Hingne Yahoo Small Business Product Management

Yahoo Small Business has taken the confusion and guesswork out of starting a small business, clearing the way for new entrepreneurs to confidently take their ideas to market and start finding customers. With today’s launch of Business Maker, small business owners will now embark on a guided journey as they start and grow their ventures through a unified dashboard that is personalized for their needs.  This mobile-first platform walks  small business owners through an intuitive step-by-step process and highlights logical next steps for launch and growth.

Business Maker moves away from the concept of an app marketplace, which typically creates more work for business owners as they have to review multiple solutions to every problem, create multiple accounts and learn a variety of interfaces just to start managing their solutions. Instead, Business Maker customers are guided on their path to success, with products recommended specifically for them, based on factors that include their industry, their stage of growth and their goals. Business owners also get assistance via to-do lists, content, and expert advice which all helps them efficiently manage the products and focus more attention on actually running their business. 

Yahoo Small Business has partnered with industry-leading software products that businesses need, and has integrated them into Business Maker to  allow a seamless exchange of data in a secure and reliable environment. With the options for free trials and customizable plans at competitive prices, Business Maker equips small businesses with essential tools to run their business efficiently and securely. 

Key Platform Features & Benefits

Unified Dashboard:  A single dashboard to view and manage all the products in a centralized location accompanied by  analytics 

Industry leading solution providers: A growing ecosystem of hand-picked partners for best in class solutions

Simple billing: Customers get a single bill for all  products purchased through Business Maker. 

Single sign-on: Customers can access all their Business Maker products with one login ID. 

Support: 24/7 support is available via phone and through content in product.

Who should use Business Maker

Whether you are a first time entrepreneur thinking of starting a business , a seasoned business owner looking to upgrade to new digital systems or a brick and mortar business trying to increase your visibility, Business Maker will help speed your journey and reach your goal. 

The following products are currently integrated within Business Maker.

Online Presence:

Having an online presence is critical for any small business; a professional website helps store your business information online, drive traffic and convert sales, boost credibility, and more. YSB’s Online Presence package includes an easy to use Website Builder, a free Domain and 5 email boxes.

Legal Package:

This product enables small businesses to legally incorporate their business. Customers can quickly transform their idea into a business via our reliable, fast and simple process. Our trusted partner, Legalinc will file all the paperwork; it takes less than 20 minutes to fill out the questionnaire. The following services are included:

LLC, C-corp or nonprofit

Federal Tax ID (EIN)

Business license report

Registered Agent service

Point of Sale:

YSB’s home-grown mobile Point of Sale solution enables customers to take multiple forms of payments (credit, debit and cash) anywhere and anytime. An intuitive user interface designed to enable efficiency, combined with the security and trust of PayPal’s payment processing capability, will enable customers to easily manage their inventory and catalog and perform checkout and easy returns

LocalWorks:

Localworks gives a small business the ability to increase visibility of their business and to stand out from the competition with easily managed profiles in more than 60 top online directories. Customers can enhance listings with photos, videos, menus; easily create promotions and drive more traffic. Centralized analytics and monitoring tools help measure performance of the listings

Business Plan Creator:

The quick and easy Business Plan creator helps a customer plan their business and stay on top of things. It enables a small business to think through every aspect of the business and helps them make sound decisions throughout the lifecycle of the business. 

And this is just the start. Our product portfolio for Business Maker will continue to grow and address the growing needs of a small business, with new products and services planned to be added in the coming months.

How to Get Started:

Begin your journey with us by completing a short onboarding questionnaire and get your personalized product recommendations. You have the choice of selecting a recommended bundle of products or build your own or a free trial. Pick an option,  checkout and begin using Business Maker!

We will continue to enhance our product portfolio with new products and services; meanwhile we hope you enjoy using Business Maker. We are excited to have you start your journey with us - ready, start, grow!

Visit https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/businessmaker for more information.

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By Ramesh Padmanabhan & Owen Hsiao, Product Management Yahoo Small Business

Yahoo Small Business has introduced Website Design Service to take the headache out of building and maintaining a professional website, and allow small business owners to instead focus their attention on taking care of customers and growing their revenue.

Website Design Service provides the design, engineering, creative and support services required to create, build, launch and manage a professional website with little time and effort required from the small business owner.

Additionally as your business evolves, your website will grow too thanks to the continued support and updates included as part of Website Design Service. Regular content updates and additions to your site will keep it fresh and accurate, as well as potentially increase your appearance in online search and your ability to get new customers.

In order to help websites continue to operate efficiently and securely, Website Design Service includes proactive updates to security plug-ins, and review of all website content for search engine optimization (SEO) before and after launch, which can help the site get higher page rankings and increased organic traffic.

Which Businesses Should Use Website Design Service?

In today’s competitive business climate, small business owners need to be able to focus on running and growing their businesses - not learning how to build and manage their websites.

But, a professional website with fresh and up-to-date content is a must-have for small businesses to be successful. Yahoo Small Business Website Design Service provides an easy and affordable solution using the popular WordPress platform to help businesses stand out from their competitors.

A quality website provides a business with a professional image that will make prospects confident in your ability to service them. A website is also often the primary place prospects will look online for businesses like yours, so it’s essential to be able to control what is shown about your products and services. Websites also make it easier for your customers to find you – by sharing hours, locations, products and services, support and more advanced features like appointment setting and quotes.

What Website Design Offers

YSB’s Website Design Service includes two offerings:

Standard: focused on delivering an elegant, professional site with all the functions most growing businesses need.

Premium: ideal for more sophisticated websites with advanced features and capabilities, including accepting reservations or appointments, issuing quotes, customer login and more frequent content refreshes.

Both offerings include SEO, reporting and regular content updates to support small business owners with the tools they need to grow their online presence. All websites are optimized for mobile.

How to Get Started

To get started, Yahoo Small Business offers an easy step-by-step process that includes consultations with an expert designer to discuss your business’ brand and goals, along with how your new website can help you build your online presence while leaving you free to focus on growing your business.

By Shirley Tan Developer Network Manager, Yahoo Small Business

March is a month known for many things… March Madness, St. Patrick’s Day, Mardi Gras, National Celery Month (who knew?). The list goes on and on. But the most significant celebrations are National Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day. These two events honor the past, present and future of the empowerment and achievements of women everywhere.

Women have become a powerful force in Small Business. As of 2018, women own 4 out of every 10 businesses in the U.S. They employ nearly 9.2 million people and generate $1.8 trillion in sales!* And it’s clear, we’re not stopping there. Women owned businesses with revenues over $1 million increased 46 percent - compared to 12 percent for all U.S. businesses - in the last decade.** Way to go ladies!

While there’s been a lot of success and much to celebrate, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Whether it be improving our ability to secure funding, inspiring more women to lead or training women to harness the power of technology, it’s clear that it’s not time to rest on one’s laurels. We have the ability (and momentum) to continue to make significant change and contributions in the communities in which we live and work.

To that end, I’m proud to be a part of Yahoo Small Business. We’ve been supporting entrepreneurs and small business owners - many of them women - for more than 20 years. And in celebration of women everywhere, we’re hosting a free webinar on March 27th. This is part of an effort to inspire you to follow your dream of starting your own business (or keep on going!) with stories from a panel of women business owners who will share what they’ve learned and what they would NOT do again. We’ll also provide you with the latest technology tips and tricks needed to launch, manage, and grow a small business. I hope you’ll join us!

Register now for our free webinar.

*Source: https://www.wbenc.org/blog-posts/2018/10/10/behind-the-numbers-the-state-of-women-owned-businesses-in-2018

**Source: https://www.inc.com/guadalupe-gonzalez/state-women-owned-businesses-report-2018.html

About Shirley Tan Shirley was an early e-commerce pioneer who founded a wedding gift company and grew it to $6.5M annual revenue with 30 full-time employees before selling it to The Knot. She is also the author of Ecom Hell, how to grow your e-commerce business and not get burned. Shirley is now part of the Yahoo Small Business team.

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By Owen Hsiao Product Manager, Yahoo Small Business

Yahoo Small Business now makes it easy for small businesses to leverage WordPress tools, templates and plugins on their own small business site. Widely known for its ability to host sites for blogging, web content and forums, WordPress hosting is ideal for a variety of businesses and is now available with Yahoo Small Business hosting, email and support.

What is WordPress hosting from Yahoo Small Business?

WordPress hosting is an open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP & MySQL. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system. WordPress is the most popular website management system in use.

WordPress hosting allows you to install WordPress in just a few steps, while a new WordPress dashboard makes simple to manage multiple websites with a single interface. This new product supports WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg.

Benefits of having WordPress hosting:

Customer support - 24/7 phone, chat and online support

Domain name and business mail - Sign up and get a domain for your brand name and multiple email addresses to match your domain.

Unlimited website installations - Create as many WordPress websites as you like using a single account.

No limits on the visitors to your site - Grow your business and attract new customers with no worries about visitor limits.

Customizable & flexible - Create a site that reflects your brand’s unique style and personality

Safe & Secure - An SSL certificate makes your customers trust your website as it keeps their information in a secure Yahoo datacenter. SSL certificate included

Get essential online insights about your business using the Yahoo Small Business Insights mobile app.

30-day satisfaction guarantee

This WordPress hosting release is just the first step in our plan to help small businesses leverage all the tools available for WordPress sites. Future releases will support integration with additional features and third-party partners, as well as tools to help users manage site security and automatic plugin updates.

Visit WordPress hosting for more information and to sign up for your own WordPress hosting site.

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By Dilip Deshpande Yahoo Small Business, Product Manager

We’ve updated our Localworks product that allows businesses to build and control their local online digital presence. Localworks is not just a paid business listing service – it also comes with pack of features to help you gain a competitive edge in the current market.

With three different plans, users can choose the package that fits their business needs. Updating listings information in the Yahoo Local website directory has never been this easy. With Localworks Starter packages that include Yahoo Local and six other essential directory listing sites, your business information will be updated in real-time. As a business owner, you will have full control of your business information, and you will be able to upload enhanced listing content such as a photo gallery, videos, calendar of special events, and promotions. You will also get access to our “Digital Assistant”, a text bot that will assist you in updating your hours of operation, adding photos, and many other items using your mobile phone. The starter package also offers robust analytics to track your business performance, all at a very affordable cost.

With nearly 60% of searches happening on mobile devices, millions of users are looking for business addresses and phone numbers, hours of operation, driving directions, menus, photo galleries, and reviews before they make a visit to the physical location of a business. As a business, if your listing information does not include this enhanced content, or if you are not monitoring your business reputation, you might be losing customers.

For businesses that want to control their business information across most of the local directories on the Internet and closely monitor user reviews, understand user sentiment and how they compete in local search, Localworks by Yahoo Small Business is a comprehensive solution.

With our higher end packages, in a single dashboard, businesses can

Publish business listings in 60+ directories (Including maps, GPS, social media sites)

Eliminate duplicate business records appearing in the Local Search ecosystem

Connect to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter

Monitor and reply to user reviews from all major review sources

Compare with 5 other competitors (local or national)

Generate reviews through our website widgets

Understand customer reviews with Sentiment Analysis

Receive In-depth analytics

Yahoo Small Business also offers a free business listing scan tool, where businesses can easily find out how their information is listed across 60+ directories and clearly identify errors in location data across local listing networks before signing up for a premium Localworks service.

About Yahoo Small Business For the past 20 years, Yahoo Small Business has helped millions of businesses get online and grow their presence on the Internet. Whether you hope to start a side business or are currently running a multi-million dollar venture, you can trust Yahoo’s proven online business experience, powerful yet easy-to-use solutions, and broad community support to help your business succeed online. Learn more at: https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com

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