Function Overview

This section provides an overview of the functionality of EPiServer Commerce. The main parts of EPiServer Commerce are Commerce Manager - for administration of back-end online store tasks, and EPiServer CMS - for managing and displaying website content.

Store Management

System Administration and Configuration

System Administration includes various configuration tasks such as setting up shipping and paymentThe verification of a money transaction in a website shopping situation. The e-commerce system most often needs a verification for a payment, in order to create the actual purchase order and complete the shopping workflow. gateways, your default language, currency, units, tax configuration, licensing, and search settings.

• System Administration

Administrative Users and Customers

Users and customers are managed by the Customer Management system. Users are internal to your organization and should not be confused with customers, partners and organizationsGroups or sub-groups of registered users and customers. An organizational unit is a "child" or subsidiary of a "parent" organization. Within Commerce Manager, you can assign an organization as a parent of another organization. For example, the parent company Company X, and the organizational units are Company X West and Company X East. Organization units include regional branches or departments or you could name them by business categories such as "Computer and Electronics" or "Clothing and Accessories." Organizations can be structured into a tree structure with sub-units with different levels of permissions assigned to each. So for example, you can set up your company as a parent level organization while your departments such as Sales & Marketing, IT/Development, and Operations as organization units. With this scenario, you can allow users in each departments to have access to only relevant subsystems, screens and functionality within Commerce Manager. Same as "organization units".. Generally, only your team of internal users will have access to the Commerce Manager and depending on their permissions will have varying access to the systems and menu items within each system.

• Customer Management

Catalogs and Product Entries

A Commerce Manager front-end site allows customers to shop for products. Products are arranged into a particular catalogA catalog is a top-level container for all catalog entries such as Categories, Products and SKUs.. Catalogs are independent from one another and you may create as many catalogs as you need. Catalogs can be structured in a number of ways and organized into Categories, Products, SKUs, Bundles, Packages and Dynamic Packages.

The Catalog Management system provides users with the ability to manage catalogs, productA product represents various forms of merchandise that you can display and purchase from the public site, including Products, Variations/SKUs, Bundles, Packages and Dynamic Packages. categoriesUsed for categorization of content. Categories are used for instance when creating filters for searching, listings and navigation. and products. A default B2C Sample Site along with a default electronics catalog (consisting of a Brands catalog + Everything catalog) is included giving you a running demo site after you run the installer.

• Catalog Management

Purchase Orders, Shopping Carts, Shipping, and Returns/Exchanges

The Order Management system is where you can monitor, track, change or create new orders, ship out items, and create returns/exchanges. Orders are highly flexible, giving internal Commerce Manager users the ability to create Purchase Orders with various options including split paymentsPayments can be split for instance in time or between different receivers., split shipping, and split shipping addresses.

• Order Management

Customer Campaigns, Promotions, and Discounts

One area handled by the Marketing system is promotionsA way to apply various discounts to the products, order totals or shipping. A Promotion is a marketing tool used to increase sales of certain products or product lines. Various incentives such as lowered pricing and other discounts can be employed as part of a Promotion. Promotions are always tied to Campaigns. Promotions can be classified into two types: 1) either you can create a Promotion that is visible prior to checkout or 2) you can configure the Promotion to be displayed during the checkout process. The most powerful aspect of the Marketing system is the Expression Engine which allows variable conditions to be applied when creating a Promotion. These conditions vary from the number of items, the percentage discount, shipping rates and many others.. A Promotion is a marketing tool used to increase sales of certain products or product lines. Various incentives such as lowered pricing and other discounts can be employed as part of a promotion.

Promotions can be classified into two types: either you can create a promotion that is visible prior to checkoutThe procedure of buying one or more products in a webshop. Involves defining shipping and billing addresses, shipping methods and payments. or you can configure the promotion to be displayed during the checkout process. The most powerful aspect of the Marketing system is the Workflow Engine which allows variable conditions to be applied when creating a Promotion. These conditions vary from the number of items, the percentage discountA value that will subtracted from the list price., shipping rates and many others.

Creating custom promotions is incredibly powerful; users have many ways in which to configure promotions based on their needs.

Marketing teams also have the ability to target specific customer segmentsDetermine the target audience for the Promotions. Customer Segments determine the target audience for the Promotions. Within a Campaign, all Promotions will be applied to whatever Customer Segments associated with the same Campaign. Members of the Customer Segments can be pre-defined in static groups or you can use the Expressions Engine to create dynamic groups whenever Promotions are run. For example, you can have a Customer Segment that targets all users from the Los Angeles area. You can create an Expression that will include all the customers whose home city is Los Angeles. Thus, when a user registers on the site he immediately becomes part of the target Customer Segment. by region, individual customers or customer groups.

• Marketing

Assets and Web Files

The Asset Management system allows for Assets including images, MP3s, PDFs, software packages and other downloadable files to be centrally stored, displayed on either the public site or the Commerce Manager site and ultimately to be shared or purchased.

• Asset Management

Content Management

Editing Content

Web editors will work inside the EPiServer CMS editorial interface to update content of web pages. Perhaps you want to create news or article content related to the products in your online store. This is most typically done by web editors creating EPiServer CMS pages.

The EPiServer Commerce page types in the sample site do not require much editorial work, since most of these are only for display purposes fetching data from elsewhere. Some editorial efforts are often needed on content pages such as news listings, privacy and shopping policiesRules that are always executed when Promotions are applied. This allows a Marketing manager to declare rules just once for the whole site.An example of a rule is as follows: Do not allow negative orders. and similar.

Administering the Website

The EPiServer CMS administration interface is where you will manage the administrative tasks for the website. These may involve setting access rights for EPiServer CMS web pages in the page tree structure, configuration of page types, management of scheduled jobs, and globalization settings.

Fore more information on the functionality and how to use EPiServer CMS, refer to the user1. The number of unique IP adresses that visited this page/URL during a specified period. 2. A person using a product, or someone visiting a community website either anonymously or as a registered member. documentation for EPiServer CMS.

Version: EPiServer Commerce 1 R2 SP2| Last updated: 2012-09-20 | Copyright © EPiServer AB | Send feedback to us