Configure Instead of Customize
When you're deciding how to customize your Commerce website, like whether to develop themes and extensions to create the experience you want for your customers, ensure that you understand the capabilities of SuiteCommerce. Review the following information to learn more:
Core Features
The capabilities you want might already be part of the NetSuite or SuiteCommerce applications. Consider these features:
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Personalized catalog views let you control the items and categories that are shown to groups of customers. You can also set more granular controls, like who can add items to the cart. For more information, see Personalized Catalog Views.
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SuitePromotions let you to offer discounts on orders and items, and give discounts directly to certain customers and customer groups. For detailed information, see Promotions.
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You can set up strike-through pricing on item records to show that your prices are lower than the manufacturer’s suggested retail price. To learn more, see Strike-Through Pricing.
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You can add access controls to your site so that only certain groups can access the site or see item prices. For more information, see Website Restriction.
The Configuration Record and Website Setup Record
Besides implementing core features, you can enable or modify additional features in the configuration record and website setup record. These records manage different aspects of your Commerce website:
|
Record |
Description |
More Information |
|---|---|---|
|
Configuration record |
Includes frontend configuration settings that let you control how your site looks and how users experience it. |
To learn how to access configuration settings, see Configure Properties. To review all supported configuration settings, see Configuration Properties Reference. |
|
Website setup record |
Includes backend configuration settings that let you enable or disable features, manage integrations between your Commerce website and NetSuite, and control the data that is available in API calls. |
To learn more about initial setup and configuration, see Prepare the Web Site Setup Record. To review all available settings, see Comprehensive Web Site Setup Reference. |
When you're designing and planning your Commerce website, check out the options in these records to see what they can do. For example, the configuration record lets you control the following aspects:
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Choose the columns that are displayed in transaction lists in My Account, such as the order history. To learn more, see Transaction Lists.
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Let your customers create quotes online. For detailed information, see Quotes for Commerce Websites.
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Let your customers to review and rate items, and see ratings and reviews from other users. To learn more, see SuiteCommerce Product Reviews.
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Track visitor traffic on your site with popular analytics tools available, such as Google Ads and Google Universal Analytics. To learn more, see Analytics.
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Configure facets to display item results. For detailed information, see Select and Configure Facet Fields.
Commerce Extensions
Commerce Extensions offer lots of features and functions that you can use to enhance your Commerce website. There's no need to customize a feature as it might already be available in an extension distributed by NetSuite.
Most Commerce extensions introduce new options to the configuration record, so anyone can configure and maintain additional functionalities. Commonly used extensions built by NetSuite include:
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SC Custom Fields extension lets you add custom fields to the Checkout application and Product Detail Pages (PDP) of your website. For details, see Create Custom Fields Using an Extension.
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SC Blog extension lets you create blog posts for your website with Site Management Tools (SMT). You can add posts with images, include excerpts, and organize them with categories and tags. For more information, see Blog.
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SC Grid Order lets you set up matrix items to show purchasing options in a table on the PDP. For detailed information, see Grid Order.
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SC Infinite Scroll loads content continuously as users scroll down, so you don't need pagination. For more information, see Infinite Scroll.
To see the full list of Commerce extensions and what they do, see Commerce Extensions.
To see example implementations of Commerce extensions, click the See it in action link for each extension on the Extension Showcase site.
Site Management Tools
Site management tools (SMT) let you update your Commerce website without writing code. With SMT, you can manage different parts of your website, including:
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Landing pages and static images
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Content management and visibility
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Custom content types (CCTs)
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Several extensions, like SuiteCommerce Blog
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Page layouts
SMT also includes the Theme Customizer/Theme Skin Manager, which let you change the way your site looks.
If your account uses Aconcagua or earlier, you manage themes and skins using the Theme Customizer. If you're on 2019.2 release of SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced or later, use the Theme Skin Manager. The Theme Customizer is similar to the Theme Skin Manager; they both let you change your website.
If you want to change the way your site looks, check if you can use the Theme Customizer or Theme Skin Manager before building a new theme. For more information, see Theme Skin Manager or Theme Customizer (Aconcagua or Earlier).
To learn more about Site Management Tools and what it can do, see Site Management Tools Overview.