• by Shankar Gupta , April 14, 2005

Yahoo! Small Businesses Wednesday began offering ultra-simplified Web pages aimed at the estimated 20 million small and medium businesses in America that have not yet staked out a claim on the Web.

The pages, which Yahoo! will host free of charge, are simple enough for even the most technology-resistant mom-and-pop. Users can choose from four design templates, and also can upload a logo, which will appear at the top right of every page. Each site can also have up to five pages, which business owners can fill with text about the company and its services. No HTML knowledge is required, or even useful: The pages don't accept any more than text and the logo--no streaming video, no embedded images or visual bells and whistles of any kind.

Rich Riley, vice president and general manager for Yahoo! Small Business, said Yahoo! made a decision to trade-off the ability to customize for ease of use. "This is explicitly designed for making it really, really easy."

For customers interested in more customizable options, Yahoo! offers a suite of Web-hosting and design features, including a domain name, e-mail addresses, and e-commerce functions for paying members. But, Riley added, Yahoo!'s objective in launching the free sites wasn't to upsell customers the more in-depth services.

When businesses sign up for Web sites, Yahoo! prompts them to also update their Yahoo! Local search listings, keeping them current. And the free Web site's URL can be included in the business's Yahoo! local listing.

While the Web hosting will be a boon for Yahoo!'s local search, said Kelsey Analyst Neal Polachek, it will also give a boost to the users of other search engines as well. "It's beneficial to everybody, because more Web sites can be crawled, so the overall experience for the consumer is enhanced," he said. But will small businesses be interested in a simple, text-based Web site? Polachek said that it's possible businesses will use the free Yahoo! pages more as an ad or an online brochure if they already have a more complex site. "It could be almost like an online brochure. You might actually have another site that would have more enhanced information," Polachek said. "I could see businesses having parallel Web sites."