Yahoo to relaunch e-commerce platform for small businesses

YAHOO is looking to woo more users into its ecosystem by relaunching its online shopping platform. It wants to take a bite out of a market worth $328 billion.

FILE - In this Friday, Jan. 25, 2013, file photo, Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!, listens during the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland. Yahoo Inc. reports quarterly financial results after the market closes. (AP Photo/Keystone, Laurent Gillieron)

YAHOO has announced the relaunch of its e-commerce platform, which allows small businesses to easily set up online retailing.

The new Yahoo Stores system, said a company blog post, allows users to “turn your idea into a business in less than two minutes”. Amit Kumar, head of Yahoo Small Business, said the new platform was “a completely re-imagined, next-generation version” of a service Yahoo that began 16 years ago.

The company “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,” he said.

Kumar said the online store can be set up to take orders within minutes, including a secure payment processing system.

Customers can visit the Yahoo Stores site and select themes from a variety of templates to sell on websites and mobile devices, the company said.

The move can help Yahoo regain a foothold in online retailing in a market expected to grow to $A328.92 billion this year, according to the research firm eMarketer.

The research firm said mobile commerce -- or sales via mobile devices -- will represent around 1.2 per cent of online sales in 2014.

Originally published as Yahoo to relaunch e-commerce platform for small businesses