Yahoo brushes up its e-commerce for small business

Yahoo announced Thursday 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 reimagined, 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 $304 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 percent of online sales this year.

© 2014 AFP