Yahoo Stores features ‘automatic’ PCI compliance for secure payments, among other options.

Yahoo Inc. has updated its Yahoo Stores e-commerce platform with features that allow small e-retailers to get a store up and running quickly.

“Yahoo Small Business took the best of everything we’ve learned from our million-plus customers over the past 16 years, and applied it to Yahoo Stores to give small business owners a more powerful, streamlined and beautiful way to turn their ideas into a business,” writes  Amit Kumar, head of Yahoo Small Business, in a blog post today announcing the changes.

Among the main changes are:

• “Automatic” compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards—a set of rules created by payment card networks for securing consumer payment account data. “Our previous version was also PCI compliant, as Yahoo only offers PCI-compliant payment options for our customers,” Kumar tells Internet Retailer.  “When we say it’s automatically PCI compliant, that means that PCI compliant payment processing is set up automatically for a merchant.” That feature will help online merchants set up their web stores more quickly, he says.

• “Automatic” search engine optimization. “Out of the box, we offer system-generated SEO optimized URLs for categories, products, product sets, and custom pages, along with SEO meta-tags,” Kumar says.

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• More design options for online stores, “with color and style guides that go beyond templates to automatically respond and adapt across mobile phones, tablets and desktop,” he writes. “We’ve also introduced a simple editing process, so changes can be made directly to your web site with no preview required.”

According to data available from Top500Guide.com, Yahoo has 16 e-commerce clients in the 2014 Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, up from 15 last year and down from 19 in 2012. In the Second 500 Guide—which this year included web merchants that make between $21 million and $265,340 in annual e-retail revenue—Yahoo has 30 clients, down from 34 last year and 43 in 2012.

Today’s changes to Yahoo’s e-commerce platform will help the company compete better in the e-retail technology space against other vendors, Kumar says. That said, Yahoo’s e-commerce platform focuses on the needs of relatively small merchants, he says. “This product is best suited for small retailers, just starting out, who want to grow to tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue. It’s designed to make it easy for someone to set up a store and begin selling in minutes,” Kumar says.

He says Yahoo’s pricing starts $26 per month if a retailer chooses an annual plan, or $29 per month for monthly billing. Those prices include features like a domain name and business e-mail for no additional charge.

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