Explore B2C Commerce Catalogs

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Explain how catalogs relate to sites.
  
• Explain how search differs from navigation.
  
• Describe how you can configure catalogs for multiple geographic markets.
  
• List the steps to deploy a catalog to a production instance.
  
• Explain the difference between catalog and inventory.
  

Commerce Cloud is now Agentforce Commerce and B2C Commerce is now Agentforce Commerce for B2C. You may see references to Commerce Cloud and B2C Commerce in our applications and documentation.

You are an Agentforce Commerce for B2C merchandiser for a retailer of high-performance athletic gear. Your mission is to curate a world-class digital shopping experience that keeps pace with your company's rapid growth. As your company expands into new geographic markets like the USA and Germany, and introduces complex product lines ranging from custom footwear to seasonal apparel collections, a critical part of your job is to maintain a seamless, intuitive storefront.

Define an Agentforce Commerce for B2C Product Catalog

In this unit you’ll design and deploy catalogs that support multiple storefronts and diverse international markets.

A Salesforce B2C Commerce catalog is a database that contains details about a merchant’s products and services, like descriptions, specifications, and warranties. It also provides the basis for storefront navigation. B2C for Commerce merchandisers work with the B2C Commerce catalog to configure catalogs that contain all the info shoppers want to know.

The catalog is at the heart of an Agentforce Commerce for B2C implementation. It describes the products that a merchant wants to sell. Most Agentforce Commerce for B2C retailers maintain their product data on a separate system of record, called a product information system (PIM). PIMs support multiple geographic locations and multilingual data within a repository. With an Agentforce Commerce for B2C implementation, you typically import PIM data into Agentforce Commerce for B2C. Some merchants use a manual system, such as configuring products within Business Manager, or implement a hybrid system that uses both.

The examples presented in this badge represent product data maintained on a PIM.

While many companies import product data on a schedule, off-schedule imports happen due to special sales, previous processing errors, or any number of reasons. After an admin imports the data, you create and update the category structure within a catalog to assign products properly.

Storefront refers to the application, while site refers to the part of an Agentforce Commerce for B2C instance on which it runs. See Architecture of Salesforce B2C Commerce module for details.

Differentiate Search and Navigation

Category navigation and storefront search are different. With search, shoppers enter a search term to find a product. With navigation, shoppers click a predefined category and multiple subcategories to find the products they want.

Design Your Catalog

Product data that’s stored in a catalog is organized by categories. Categories provide the Commerce for B2C storefront navigation structure.

Here’s how the structure breaks out.

Agentforce Commerce for B2C uses two types of catalogs: product and storefront. It’s a good idea to create both, even for new merchants just starting to sell online. Small companies with a few products often turn into big companies with a growing number of products that they want to sell in diverse markets or locations.

• The product catalog contains product data imported from an external PIM system, retains the structure of the PIM, and is not assigned to a site.
  
• The storefront catalog is where you create categories that define storefront navigation. A storefront uses this one catalog. A product must be assigned to a category for it to appear on the storefront.
  

Catalog Scenarios

Before you create your storefront catalog, it’s helpful to review different catalog solutions. For example, here are three different common catalog scenarios.

Two Basic Catalogs

The product catalog represents the inventory system’s category and product definitions and internal classification structure. The storefront catalog’s category structure reflects how the retailer wants to sell products.

New Geographic Area

As an example, let’s say that your company wants to sell the same products in the USA and German markets. Each market has its own site (and its own language), and uses the same categories as the product catalog. You name the catalogs as follows.

Here’s how you configure the catalogs.

Only products included in a site’s storefront catalog and assigned to a category are visible on that site. Some products sold on your company’s USA site are available on the company’s German site, and some aren’t. For example, PN003 (product ID) is only available on the German site, while PN004 is available on both.

Products can be available in multiple categories. For example, PN004 is available in the footwear and the sale categories in the USA site. 

Virtual Sidewalk Sale

You want to create a separate site for brand-specific sales events that shoppers access using a special code. Here’s the catalog structure.

Create a Catalog

You can assign a catalog to multiple sites. However, each site has one catalog only.

In this module, we assume you are an Agentforce Commerce for B2C merchandiser with the proper permissions to perform these tasks. If you’re not an Agentforce Commerce for B2C merchandiser, that’s OK. Read along to learn how your merchandiser would take these steps in a staging instance. Don’t try to follow our steps in your Trailhead Playground. Agentforce Commerce for B2C isn’t available in the Trailhead Playground.

If your site uses Agentforce Commerce for B2C but you don’t have access, contact your administrator for login credentials. If you have a Agentforce Commerce for B2C sandbox instance, you can try out these steps on that instance. If you don’t have a sandbox and you’re a customer or partner developer, ask your manager if there is a sandbox that you can use. 

Here’s how you create a storefront catalog. 

1. In Business Manager, select App Launcher, and select Merchant Tools | Site | Products and Catalogs | Catalogs.
   
2. Select New.
   
   
3. Select the language: Default
   
4. Enter the catalog ID: your-company-category. Use a unique ID. Don’t use the same name as the storefront.
   
5. Enter the catalog name: USA Catalog
6. Select Apply.
   
7. Navigate to the Site Assignments tab.
   

• Select the sites you want to assign this catalog to.
  
• Select Apply.
  

After you create a storefront catalog, you:

1. Create categories
   
2. Configure category attributes
   
3. Define site settings:
   

• Search settings
  
• Sorting rules
  
• Page meta tag rules
  

Maintain and Deploy Catalogs

You create and maintain catalogs on your staging instance. When your catalog changes are ready, your admin replicates the catalogs to the development instance for testing. After you finish testing, the admin replicates the catalogs from the staging instance to the production instance.

Manage Inventory

While an Agentforce Commerce for B2C catalog represents a set of products, an inventory system keeps track of the number of products available to sell. Having an accurate inventory system is essential for the shopper experience. You don’t want your shoppers getting to the cart only to learn that the size and color they want isn’t in stock. And you don’t want them to receive an email after placing an order, saying that their selection is no longer available.

Inventory systems track things like preorder/backorder handling and allocation. For example, after a shopper orders a pair of Brand X sneakers, size 9, color white, the storefront application has already determined via the inventory system that only two products with this variation (size 9, color white) remain in stock. After shoppers order the remaining available stock of this variation, the variation automatically goes on backorder or becomes unavailable.

Merchants can track product inventory in Agentforce Commerce for B2C, in an external system, or in a hybrid that combines both. Here are some options.

Next

In this unit, you learned about basic catalog structure and how product catalogs differ from storefront catalogs. You also learned how search differs from navigation, how to configure catalogs for different use cases, and more. Next, learn about categories.

Resources

• Trailhead: Sell Everywhere with Commerce Cloud
• Trailhead: Salesforce B2C Commerce
• Trailhead: Agentforce Commerce for B2C Merchandisers
• Trailhead: Architecture of Salesforce B2C Commerce
• Salesforce Help: Catalogs, Categories, and Products
• Salesforce Help: Inventory Management
• Trailhead: Omnichannel Inventory