• by Tameka Kee , November 5, 2007

Just in time for the holidays, Yahoo Small Business has developed new automated Keyword Finder and cross-selling tools for its Merchant Solutions e-commerce platform. Both tools are available for no cost to merchants in the program.

YSB offers domain registration, site hosting, email and advertising services in addition to e-commerce tools for small businesses--and has rolled out the new analytics-rich features to help merchants like simplehuman, American Apparel and eHobbies.com take advantage of the 2007 holiday season.

With Keyword Finder, Yahoo gives merchants info on the terms that have driven traffic to their sites in the previous two months, and keywords that have led to actual sales in the previous year.

The tool also takes an online retailer's entire product catalog and feeds it through the Yahoo Search Marketing keyword engine to determine whether product names are available as "torso and long tail keywords," according to Jimmy Duvall, Yahoo director of e-commerce products.

Data from the Keyword Finder "connects the dots for merchants," said Duvall, noting that it offers them an at-a-glance view of which terms are the best sources of organic and paid traffic and conversions.

Site owners can download the new list of terms and update it into Yahoo, Google or MSN search marketing interfaces, and the tool alerts merchants of high-volume sponsored search terms that may be too pricey for the amount of actual sales they generate.

While a manual cross-selling option has always been available in Merchant Solutions, the new tool adds Yahoo's behavioral data and automation technology for a more effective "suggestive sell."

The cross-sell tool recommends additional products on product pages, shopping cart pages or both--based on data from a user's past purchase and navigation history. Merchants can create cross-sell rules manually, use auto-suggestions, and also choose to exclude products from being up-sold.

Duvall added that the feature continually collects info so that it can make better suggestions over time.