Yahoo announced that it has released the first phase of Customer Registration for Yahoo stores. This introduces registration, sign-in, and account features for store owners to offer their customers. This way, customers can register their info for quicker checkout experiences in the future.

Customer Registration uses OpenID, which should make things even smoother for customers. They won’t have to remember new log-in info, and can simply sign in with a Yahoo, Google, or AOL account.

Users will see "sign in" and "register" links at the top of your store pages.

"Registered customers may now access a customer account area," says Yahoo’s Jennifer Farwell. "The My Account feature makes it easy for customers to check on the status of open orders and to view shipment and tracking information, without having to contact the store merchant directly. This feature also allows customers to see their order history from the time they’ve registered their account, quickly place repeat orders in one click using the new reorder function, and view and edit their customer information."

On a side note, Checkout Manager is now called Checkout & Registration Manager (beta). The beta label only applies to the registration feature. Once it leaves beta (sometime next year), it will include a merchant feature set. For now, it only consists of buyer-facing features.

Details about setting up customer registration can be found here.