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Start Selling Your Products Online

Whether you are dreaming of starting the next Amazon.com or just looking to sell a few products online, Yola now has the solution for you..

With our newest feature, the Yola Online Store, we’re changing the game for online sellers around the world, by seamlessly integrating an advanced online store with our powerful business website builder all for a remarkably low price of $19.95/month, over one hundred dollars per month less than our leading competitors.

We are thrilled to introduce the Yola Online Store, a package that allows you to create sophisticated online stores from within your Yola website. With this new addition, now you can manage your store, mobile website, email, new customer submission and much more, all from your Yola account.

With advanced features like tax and shipping integration, the acceptance of over 15 payment methods, and the ability for your customers save their profile into your store, Yola Online Store has all the features you need to create and run a professional store. You can sign up and start selling online today.

For users who do not yet have a Yola Bronze or Silver hosting package, Yola Online Store is available for $19.95/mo and it includes all the features of our Yola Silver package in addition to the eCommerce features. If you are already a Yola Bronze or Yola Silver customer, Yola Online Store will be available to you as an upgrade for only $10 more per month.

Yola Online Store features include:

• An integrated shopping cart that can be added to multiple pages or sites, including your Facebook page, allows your products to be seen (and purchased) in more places
• Advanced product set-up, including variable pricing for options like different sizes, colors, models means a complex inventory can be made simple
• Yola Store accepts payments through multiple payment gateways (for example PayPal, Google Checkout, SagePay and more) giving you complete flexibility to choose the right one for you.
• We support dozens of languages for your storefront including English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and many more.  This means your store can be open to more customers worldwide.
• Integrated with local and international shipping providers, including: UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS means your products can be shipped to your customers faster.
• The ability to set up a sales tax for your products based on your location and the location of your customers means you can localize your store to your customers.
• Your users will be able to save their shopping profile, including payment method, billing address, shipping address and previous orders, so they can place repeat orders quicker and easier.
• The management of your inventory, orders, sales and invoices is made easy with our intuitive online dashboard
• Order tracking and automated confirmation and shipping emails keep your customers informed about their purchase.
• Easily upload products in bulk to your store to save time and effort
• Integrated with mobile friendly-site publishing included in Yola Silver

The release of this feature would have not been possible without the help of our partners, the Ecwid team, and the help of our beta users that have been using the store and providing us with invaluable feedback.  Yola sends a big thank you to everyone involved.

We hope you enjoy this new feature, and we look forward to seeing your stores and hearing your success stories,

Please email us with any feedback or product improvements ideas at ecommerce-beta@yola.com, and, as always, don’t hesitate to contact our support team with any questions at support@yola.com.

Labels: Product,Releases | No Comments »

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For 2012, make sure your site’s the best it can be

Now that 2012 is here, you’ve probably made a few New Year’s resolutions—some of which you might keep, and some of which… well, let’s just say we think we’ll be hearing those again in 2013.

But if there’s one resolution you should make—and keep—this year, it’s to make sure your website’s the best it can be for 2012 and beyond. The good news is, Yola makes this one promise that’s super-simple to keep!

Our website building tool lets you build and update your site all in moments—no web developer or designers necessary. Just hit the “Publish to the web” button, choose your domain, and you’re off to the races. And with the 20 new style templates we’ve added over the past year, you might even just want to refresh your look for the New Year.

2012 is definitely the year to start driving more customers to your site. Google AdWords (you get a $50 credit with Yola Bronze and a $75 credit with Yola Silver), simple SEO (search engine optimization) strategies, and email newsletters are all great ways to help more people find your site and your business. Check out this Mashable article for other great ideas on driving more sales from your site.

Be sure to take advantage of our other recent tools, like integrating your blog with Yola using Tumblr, adding social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to your site through our Social Share Me widget, and even making your logo more unique by uploading your own font through our site.

As always, we’re here to make sure your site is a straight-up success. Our Yola Bronze package (just $4.95 a month) will get you online and looking professional and our Yola Silver package (just $9.95 a month) will help you stand out from the competition. And don’t forget that you can get your own custom domain from us for only $11.95 a year.

From all of us at Yola: here’s to a wildly successful 2012!

Labels: Small Business | 1 Comment »

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Featured Website: Daily Cup of Fitness

For fitness professionals Karen Vizueta and Sabrina Sarabella, getting in shape and leading a healthier lifestyle isn’t something you should think about just once or twice a week—it really should be a part of your daily routine. That’s why their site, dailycupoffitness.com, provides visitors with regularly updated fitness and nutrition tips designed to “fit into any busy schedule.”

Here’s what Karen and Sabrina have to say about choosing—and using—Yola:

Being fitness experts and not technology experts, Yola gives us the user-friendly tools to get our fitness tips to our viewers on a daily basis.
We’re able to spend more time researching and writing and less time uploading and publishing. We love the fact that we can update our daily tips from wherever we are.
Our site has given us the ability to reach viewers daily and add pictures and video of fitness instruction. We now have a great site where we send our clients, potential clients and anyone we meet. Thank you for allowing us to spread and share our passion of fitness with quick and effective tips all week long!

Would you like to see your site featured on our blog? Just take a few minutes to tell us what you think makes your site stand out and send it to support@yola.com.

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Widget Wednesday: Google AdSense

Today’s widget under the spotlight is the Google AdSense widget.

The Google AdSense widget makes the implementation of Google ads on your site as simple as copy and paste! If you’re not familiar with Google AdSense, read-on for more information.

What is Google AdSense?
Google AdSense is a flexible, hassle-free way to earn revenue by showing relevant and engaging ads alongside your online content. Best part? It’s free, easy to use and there’s no contract required!

How does it work?
AdSense works by matching text and image ads to your site based on your content and the types of users that visit your site. For example, if you write about running, your readers may see ads next to your post about running shoes and equipment. Ads are created and paid for by advertisers who want to promote their products.

Great content is key
Posting high quality content is the best way to maximize your returns with AdSense. It’s important to take a little extra time defining your topic, creating a post that is engaging and matters to your readers. The more interesting and appealing your content is, the more likely your readers will be to click on the ads on your website.

You can find the Google AdSense widget under the Ecommerce widget category in Sitebuilder.

Drag the widget to where you would like the ads to display on your website. It will then open up a dialog box where you can sign up to AdSense and get your code.

Once you have the code, simply paste it into the field shown below and press save.

AdSense may take a while to appear after you have saved it. Don’t worry, just wait a few minutes and then refresh your page.

You are investing precious resources into creating great original content for your users, how about you put it at work with AdSense? Add the Google AdSense Widget to get started and good luck!

Labels: Widget Wednesday | No Comments »

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Widget Wednesday: Column Divider Widget

Our Column Divider Widget seems like quiet and unassuming widget but really it is a heavy lifter. It can completely change the layout of your website and organize any unruly content. You can nest additional widgets inside the columns created by the Column Divider Widget, and you can even add more Column Dividers inside of Column Dividers to create more columns and organization.

The center divider of the Column Divider Widget can be dragged to the left or right to change the size of the columns. You can also edit the margins by clicking on the “Margin” link on the top left-hand corner of the widget. This will open up a screen that allows you to adjust the margins. You can adjust the margins individually by entering the value desired into each box in the diamond formation (top, right, bottom, left). You can also have your margins be created equally on all sides by dragging the slider to the right to increase the margin size and to the left to decrease it.  It is a good idea to create margins so that content from the different columns doesn’t appear to “run together” on the page.

Labels: Widget Wednesday | No Comments »

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Take Your Site Mobile

We are exited to announce our newest feature: mobile publishing!

Mobile publishing lets you take your existing website and instantly create a version optimized for viewing on an iPhone, Android, or BlackBerry device.  The mobile version contains all of your website’s pages and information in a size that fits perfectly on a smaller screen.  If you have a business number or address, it will automatically add a “Call” and “Map” button to the top of your mobile site.

Internet usage on smart phones will soon exceed that on regular computers, making mobile sites a necessity for being well-positioned online.  With a mobile site, your customers can now connect with your business anytime, anywhere.

The feature is still in early beta testing, so please excuse us while we iron out the kinks.  But check it out and let us know what you think.  It is free to everyone with the Yola Silver hosting package.

Labels: Product,Releases | 1 Comment »

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Featured Website: Theatre Talks

For almost a decade, Cezar Del Valle’s Theatre Talks website was hosted by a different company. But wanting more features and an easier-to-use site builder, he picked Yola for his new-and-improved site.

A basic design with emphasis on content has always been my preference for Theatre Talks. This was quite easy to set-up on Yola even with uploading my own background. What set the new site apart from the old were the various widgets. Instead of a changing display of Flickr photos, I was able to set up a more professional-looking slideshow of my walking tours complete with fades and dissolves. As the finishing touches were being added to Theatre Talks, I also quickly and effortlessly built an eCommerce site using Yola’s widgets. Rebuilding my old home page while also constructing a new online bookstore has been very a positive experience and surprisingly enjoyable. — Cezar Del Valle

Cezar also tells us that he previewed his new slideshows to friends on Facebook and LinkedIn, drawing numerous positive comments. Bravo!

Want to see your site featured here? Take a few minutes to tell us what you think makes your site stand out and submit it to: support@yola.com.

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Exciting new package changes!

Great news!  We listened to your feedback, and we have made some significant changes to our domains and packages.  We are introducing lower priced domains, a new Bronze package, and the ability to pay for hosting monthly instead of the whole year up-front. 

Lower Priced Domains
Over the last year, we have introduced more than a dozen new custom domain types such as .us and .co.  We have always included the price of hosting in our domain prices.  This unfortunately meant that someone who purchased a second domain from us, in essence, paid for hosting twice and this model led to some confusion.  So we decided to split our hosting costs from our domains.

This means when you purchase your first domain, you will need a hosting package to go with it.  Then once you have a hosting package, you can purchase additional domains without paying for hosting twice.  For our existing domain and Silver customers, we have already migrated you to a domain and hosting package.  This means you will be able to start taking advantage of our lower priced domains immediately.  We now offer .com domains at $11.95/year and have reduced the price of all our other domains as well.  It is now more affordable to protect your business’s brand identity by securing additional domains like .net, .biz, or .co.

Yola Bronze has arrived
We are also introducing a new starter hosting package called Yola Bronze.  In addition to the easy-to-use, powerful site building tools all our users get, Yola Bronze includes the following key features:

• Premium quality domain hosting
• External domain pointing to your Yola site
• Twice as much storage (2GB per site)
• Ability to create up to 5 unique sites
• $50 Google AdWords credit
• Premium Phone and Email Support for 30 days

We also modified our free offering for new users to align it with the new Yola Silver and Yola Bronze changes.

Pay Monthly
In order to provide you with even more flexibility, we are introducing monthly billing for new subscribers.  This means that when you chose one of our hosting packages, you will now have the option of being billed monthly or annually.  We will also still continue to offer our “2 months free” annual package for purchase at a discount.

For more information regarding our changes, please check out our Frequently Asked Questions.

Labels: Domains,Product,Releases | No Comments »

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Spruce up your social networks for the holiday season

It’s a given that having a strong social media presence can positively impact your business. That’s even truer during the holiday shopping season.

Here are a few tips on how to amplify your social reach:

1. Most importantly – start now! It’s important to build your base and create momentum before the busy holiday period begins
2. Update your website with some seasonal images, but don’t go overboard – a little holly or candy cane goes a long way to show your customers you have something new to offer during the holidays
3. Also customize your Facebook profile picture and/or Twitter background for the holiday season
4. Create conversations in your social networks that relate to the holidays, such as “What is your favorite Thanksgiving dish?”
5. Add useful holiday tips, ideas and stories to entice customers to spend more time interacting with your content
6. Develop a personal relationship with your customers by sharing what you’re doing for the holidays – post photos, write personal stories, and more
7. Don’t forget that people are always on the lookout for good deals during the holidays, so offer time-sensitive and/or exclusive offers that are only accessible from Facebook or Twitter

Labels: Small Business | No Comments »

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