Service emphasizes customization, brand autonomy and a simplified checkout process.

Yahoo! has recently taken a step towards furthering consumerism by redesigning its hosting service to suit its small business merchants.  The revamped service emphasizes customization, brand autonomy, and a simplified checkout process for the 35,000 merchants who have already created websites through Yahoo!. 

Merchants are now encouraged to customize their checkouts with the same tools they use to design the rest of their sites as well as the content displayed in designated navigation areas across their sites, from initial browsing to checkout.  This new service also allows businesses to choose between single and multi page checkout options, whether to include shipping and billing information on one page, and the use of an order review page.

"Generic Yahoo! checkout pages used to give Web sites legitimacy at a time when consumers were still wary of shopping online.  Today, our research is telling us how much more comfortable consumers are with merchants, who can then concentrate more on their independent look and strategy," said Jimmy Duvall, director of ecommerce products for Yahoo! Small Business.