Your Turbify Store is Unlimited

Istvan "RTML" Siposs
By Istvan Siposs, 2023-12-15
Turbify (Yahoo!) stores have, at times, been unfairly associated with limitations in customization and perceived constraints. However, this reputation couldn't be further from the truth: Turbify stores offer one of the most customizable template languages available. Truly, the sky is the limit.

Your Turbify Store is Unlimited

Why Turbify?

  • Optional Mobile-Only Store: To our knowledge, Turbify is the only platform where your store can have a completely separate, mobile-optimized version. This is different from just having a responsive site: on mobile devices your store load using only what's needed on mobile devices. This way your pages can truly be fine-tuned for mobile presentation.
  • Customizable Checkout: Unlike the competition, Turbify offers full customizability of your checkout flow and checkout pages. You can add custom fields, change the flow, combine or separate checkout pages, can add custom styles and scripts, and have full control over the look and feel and functionality of your entire checkout process.
  • Unlimited Design and Functionality Potential: Turbify's template language, RTML, is a full-blown programming language. It is responsible for the entire HTML structure of the store, at can pull information from other pages in the catalog, it can do different things on different page types (product, section, info, etc) - even do different things on specific, individual pages.
  • Custom Page Types, Custom Variables: if the built-in page types don't fit your specific needs, with Turbify you can create completely custom pages with its on custom fields. You can also add custom fields to existing page types, or add custom fields to individual pages. And, you can extend the admin area with custom variables which can be used to control any custom functionality your store may have.
  • Unlimited Product Options: most e-commerce platforms limit the number of customer-selectable options (sometimes called variants.) Not Turbify! Here you can have as many and as varied options as you want, and you can even derive the product's price based on the customer's option selection (great for personalized products!)
  • Full-on CPanel Web Hosting: Your store comes with an industry-standard CPanel-based web hosting account, not typically found in other e-commerce platforms. This way if your store needs some truly custom functions which require custom PHP coding and/or database access, you don't have to get separate hosting from some other provider. It's right there in your store.
  • Extensive APIs: Many store functions can be access via APIs: orders, payments, catalog.
  • You Choose Your Merchant Account: you can shop around to find a merchant account to process your credit card transactions. You won't be locked into higher fees your platform may charge.

Yes, It Can Be Done!

Turbify's predecessor, Yahoo! Store (and later Yahoo! Merchant Solutions) was one of the first generally available e-commerce platforms. While the user interface had been set up to make it super easy for anyone with limited or no technical knowledge to use, for any serious customization one had to learn and use its template language, RTML. At the time there was virtually no documentation on the language, and anyone brave enough to venture into the template editor was faced with a very unusual language and a highly unconventional way of writing code. For this reason, very few developers - and certainly no merchants - took the plunge and learn template editing. My writing and publishing RTML 101: The Unofficial Guide To Yahoo! Store Templates broke the ice and more and more developers started offering Yahoo! (now Turbify) store customization services. However, the reputation that these stores were very rigid and limited stuck.

I'm surprised to hear that even long time clients often begin their inquiries with "I'm not sure if it's possible in Turbify but...". What I like to say is this: assume it can be done. Tell me what you need and I'll let you know when it will be ready.

Highlights

Completely Custom Checkout - SideBySideStuff

One of the most customized stores we've done is www.sidebysidestuff.com. At the time of this writing, the store uses a single-page checkout with a bunch of customizations. When you arrive at the checkout page, all the sections are closed, except for the first one where you enter your email address. After the email address is entered, clicking "Continue" will close that section and open the next section, "Shipping Information". Here, required fields are shown with a red border. Shipping and tax is calculated as soon as enough information is entered for the shipping/tax calculation to take place (this function is provided by KingWebmaster's Advanced Shipping Manager).

The cart summary block is also sticky, scrolls with the page as needed.

Completely Custom Checkout - MoreHands

morehands.com - This store is unusual in the sense that the site itself is not Turbify, only the final checkout (the entire store could of course be set up on Turbify but the site owners had other reasons to keep the main pages on their own hosting environment.) The final checkout where the orders are placed are on Turbify and those pages are highly customized. Basically the entire checkout layout and functionality is custom.

Super Customized Add To Cart Experience - kabinetking.com

Kabinetking.com is yet another highly customized store with an even more customized add to cart experience. You can configure and add multiple products to the cart without leaving the page, and you can increase / decrease the added quantities also without leaving the page. There is also a floating minicart which opens up when clicking the "Cart" button in the header. The mega menu is also custom designed.

Complex, Progressive Personalization - trophycentral.com

Trophycentral.com offers personalized, custom awards, trophies, plaques and more. In their website we created a personalization wizard which also includes a dynamically updating preview of each personalization. The selected personalization options determine the final price which is reflected both on the product page and in the cart. The preview of the finalized personalization can also be brought up from within the shopping cart page.

Besides the personalization wizard, there are many cool features here, such as a complex mega menu, dynamic content filtering, quick view on category (section) pages and more.