Site Builder Websites
Whether you chose basic customization, or advanced customization, you can use point-and-click Site Builder tools to accomplish setup tasks. You can track product inventory and sales-related transactions (including returns) in your NetSuite account.
Use the Content Manager to add and edit the content in your Site Builder site. For more information, see Site Builder Web Site Content Manager.
When you create your web store, there are several ways to construct the site to address both the needs of your business and the needs of your customers. Building a web store with Site Builder requires little if any knowledge of HTML.
Products
Designing your NetSuite web store begins by customizing product information for online shopping. You can customize descriptions and choose images that appear online.
Some of the item record fields you can configure are:
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names
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descriptions
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online price
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images that appear with items
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meta tags that describe each item
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item page titles
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categories items appear in
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related items
You can also create records for publishing general information, such as contact information, or instructions for making purchases on your web store. NetSuite information items offer you flexibility in communicating with your customers by enabling you to also create e-mail forms, enter text messages and create custom search forms in your site. For more information, see Site Builder Items, Forms, & Images.
Organize Your Web Store
After you have configured item records in NetSuite to display products on your site, you need to set up the organizational structure of your site. Do this by creating tabs (top-level categories) to organize your site. You can group similar items together by the categories you create. Similar categories can be grouped together and displayed on a tab. Customers click the name of a tab to view the categories and items it organizes. NetSuite provides you with default tabs, and you can create your own.
For example, a web store manager creates the following tabs to organize products on the site: Printers, Accessories, Monitors, Computers. Within each tab, categories are created to organize the items displayed on the site. On the Printers tab, the web store manager creates categories for the different types of printers, such as Laser, InkJet, and All-In-One.
For more information, see Site Builder Tabs & Categories.
Website Appearance
From one page in NetSuite, you can configure the look and feel of your web store. You also set preferences for how customers experience your web store and how your store works with your NetSuite account.
NetSuite offers you several basic site themes on the Setup Web Site page that you can use to configure your site’s appearance. You can also set the logo for your site, your site’s color theme, the text displayed in email messages sent from your site, search preferences and more. For more information, see Site Builder Customization.
The Advanced Site Customization feature is required to customize the basic site themes that come with NetSuite.
Backend Integration
On the Set Up Web Site page, you also control how your site integrates with your back office.
The following represent some of the choices you can make when integrating your site:
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Your default sales order type
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Customer registration requirements
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Shipping information requirements
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Automated order confirmation e-mail customizations
CDN caching is not available for Site Builder websites.
Advanced Customization Site Builder Setup
The Advanced Site Customization feature lets you extend basic NetSuite Site Themes, create your own site themes, and use NetSuite’s Web Site Tags. You can use HTML to extend the site themes and layouts included in Site Builder. The following tools included in the Advanced Site Customization feature, give you flexibility of design and maintenance. For more information, see Advanced Site Customization.
Site Builder Templates and Themes
Site themes control the look and feel of your site, including the layout of tabs, sidebars, and the headers and footers of pages in your Site Builder web store.
You can customize the basic NetSuite site themes and templates, and you can create your own. Advanced knowledge of HTML is helpful when you create custom item/category templates. For more information, see Customizing Site Themes.
Item Drilldown Template
When you use the Advanced Site Customization feature, you can customize the template that displays detailed item record information on your site. The item detail page is displayed when a shopper clicks on an item on your website to see more information. Similar to creating templates for site themes, you can insert Web Site Tags into your custom HTML to pull information from the item record and display it on your web store. For more information, see Item and Category Templates.
For example, a web store manager can create two item drilldown templates. One generic template that is used for most items, and displays the stock availability. The second is used for bundle items, such as computer packages, and does not include stock availability. Item templates can be specified on individual item records.
Web Site Tags
Use NetSuite Web site tags to apply an advanced level of customization to your website. Web developers who are proficient with HTML are able to use web tags most effectively. For more information, see Web Site Tags.
HTML Hosted in NetSuite
Hosting your HTML files in NetSuite enables you to integrate your existing HTML website pages with your NetSuite account to manage online sales, product inventory, and marketing. The Web Site Hosting feature lets you display HTML content that you create integrated with information from item records in your NetSuite account. You can also use the NetSuite shopping cart, and track information about visitors to your site. For more information, see Website Hosting with Site Builder.
You can use NetSuite Web Site Tags in your custom HTML to control sections of your website pages and to create links to NetSuite-generated pages, such as tabs and categories. You can also use Web Site Tags to pull information from your NetSuite account, such as customer names, links to files in the file cabinet, and information item forms. For more information, see Tags for Use in HTML Pages and Site Templates.
When your website is published to customers, NetSuite Web Site Tags are automatically replaced with content and hyperlinks. When customers place orders in your store, the information is transferred to your NetSuite account.
For example, you may already have a web store that you want to integrate with your NetSuite account. Instead of designing a whole new website, you can add NetSuite Web Site Tags to the HTML content, and then upload your HTML files to the NetSuite file cabinet. Immediately, the existing site is integrated with NetSuite.
External Catalog Site (Web Site Developer's Kit, WSDK)
You can use a hosting service other than NetSuite to organize and publish your site, then integrate that site with the NetSuite shopping cart.
If you are currently hosting your web store with a third party, you can use the Site Builder External Catalog Site feature. This feature activates the Web Site Developer’s Kit (WSDK) which enables you to copy NetSuite-generated scripts and paste them into your website HTML. These scripts send and receive product information from your NetSuite account.
For example, a company that recently purchased NetSuite already has a web store but wants to integrate the store with NetSuite’s ERP features. The company uses the External Catalog Site feature to accomplish this. For more information, see External Catalog Site (WSDK) Overview.