March 9, 2005

Wishing to become the Internet one-stop place for ecommerce site owners and small business entrepreneurs, Yahoo announces its new Small Business Resource Center featuring 8 subject channels, thousands of articles and other resources designed to help business owners succeed in their ventures.

Yahoo responded to the demands from many of its users for more useful content. "We wanted to create best place for SMBs to get that essential content.

It's also a great advertising opportunity for our advertisers," said Rich Riley, General Manager and V.P. of Yahoo! Small Business. "Our customers expressed an explicit need for more content and in an easier-to-use format. It's easy to navigate and easy to search so they don't have to go to different sites to learn various things."

Yahoo's new Resource Channel is designed to help small businesses find information they need on topics ranging from human resources to online marketing. The eight "channels" introduced today cover sales and marketing, legal advice, management and getting started online.

Also included is original content written by Yahoo's staff about topics such as paid search, site design and search engine optimization.

To beef up its content offering even further, Yahoo has partnered with many of the big names in the business publishing world including Inc./FastCompany and Entrepreneur Magazine. More than 1,000 articles are immediately available. Riley says there is ten times more content available on the site than before.

"The Yahoo content is all unique. For the content we're getting from partners, it is generally available on their sites. It's aggregated and easy to search. We'll be promoting it throughout the Yahoo network," he said.

Yahoo's new Small Business Resource Center has eight subject channels and more than 1,000 articles pertaining to running a successful small business - both online and off.

While Riley wouldn't disclose how many businesses sign up for Yahoo's hosting services each day, he did say the company hosts hundreds of thousands of sites, hosts every one of eight online stores and has seen billions of dollars in transactions across the company's SMB platform.

Even with millions of businesses online, Riley said, "The majority of small businesses aren't online."

"The target market is consistent with our current small business customers. Small business owners want to run their business, so they focus on doing what they do, and spending as little time as they can building web sites. We try to bring those all together. This is not an attempt to move up market," he said.

Source: eCommerce Guide

Advertise on E-Commerce News