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.

What’s in a B2C Commerce Product Catalog?

A Salesforce B2C Commerce catalog is a database that contains details about a merchant’s products and services, such as descriptions, specifications, warranties, and so on. It can also provide the basis for storefront navigation. Brandon Wilson, senior merchandiser at Cloud Kicks, a high-end custom sneaker retailer, is a huge fan of his company’s products and wants to ensure that his storefront is organized for easy shopper navigation. Getting the world’s greatest footwear, apparel, and sports gear to eager shoppers is what makes his day. He works with the B2C Commerce catalog to make sure that his data is configured correctly and contains all the info that shoppers want to know.

The catalog is at the heart of a B2C Commerce implementation. It describes the products that a merchant wants to sell. Like most retailers, Cloud Kicks maintains 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 a B2C Commerce implementation, PIM data is typically imported into B2C Commerce. Some merchants use a manual system, such as configuring products within Business Manager, or implement a hybrid system that uses both.

While Cloud Kicks imports product data on a schedule, off-schedule imports happen due to special sales, previous processing errors, or any number of reasons. Once the administrator, Linda Rosenberg, imports the data, Brandon creates and updates the category structure within a catalog to ensure products are assigned properly.

Search Versus 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. See the Salesforce B2C Commerce Storefront Search module to learn more about search.

Catalog Design

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

B2C Commerce uses two types of catalogs: product and storefront. It’s a best practice to create both, even for new merchants just starting to sell online. Little 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

Brandon starts by configuring his storefront catalog. He has a few scenarios in mind.

• Two basic catalogs
• New geographic area
• Virtual Sidewalk sale

Two Basic Catalogs

Brandon configures two catalogs per best practices. The product catalog represents the inventory system’s category and product definitions and internal classification structure, while the storefront catalog’s category structure reflects how the merchant wants to sell its products.

New Geographic Area

Cloud Kicks wants to sell the same products in USA and Colombian markets. Each market has its own site (and its own language), and uses the same categories as the product catalog. He names his catalogs as follows.

Here’s how he configures his catalogs.

Only products included in a storefront catalog and assigned to a category are visible on that site. Some products sold on the Cloud Kicks USA site are available on the Cloud Kicks Columbian site, and some are not. For example, PN003 (product ID) is only available on the Cloud Kicks Columbian 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 Cloud Kicks USA site. 

Virtual Sidewalk Sale

Brandon wants to create a separate site for brand-specific sales events that shoppers access using a special code. Here’s his catalog structure.

Create a Catalog

Brandon can assign a catalog to as many sites as he wants, but he can only assign one catalog to a site.

In this module, we assume you are a B2C Commerce merchandiser with the proper permissions to perform these tasks. If you’re not a B2C Commerce 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. B2C Commerce isn’t available in the Trailhead Playground.

If your site uses B2C Commerce but you don’t have access, contact your administrator for login credentials. If you have a B2C Commerce 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 to create a storefront catalog. 

1. Open Business Manager.
2. Select site > Merchant Tools > Products and Catalogs > Catalogs.
3. Click New.
   
   
4. Select the language: Default
5. Enter the catalog ID: cloud-kicks-usa-prod
   It must be unique, and you can’t change it. Don’t use the same name as the storefront. It will be confusing.
6. Enter the catalog name: USA Catalog
7. Click Apply.
8. Click the Site Assignments tab.
   • Select the sites you want to assign this catalog to.
   • Click Back.

After Brandon creates a storefront catalog, he:

1. Creates categories
2. Configures category attributes
3. Defines site settings:
   1. Search settings
   2. Sorting rules
   3. Page meta tag rules

Maintain and Deploy Catalogs

Brandon creates and maintains catalogs on his staging instance, and then Linda Rosenberg, the administrator, replicates the catalogs to the development instance for testing. Once Brandon is finished testing, Linda replicates the catalogs from the staging instance to the production (and the development) instance.

Manage Inventory

While a B2C Commerce catalog represents a set of products, an inventory system keeps track of the number of products available to sell. Having a good inventory system is essential for the shopper experience. Brandon doesn’t want his shoppers getting to the cart only to learn that the size and color they want isn’t in stock or 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 HighTopZoom 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. Once shoppers order the remaining two of this variation, the variation automatically goes on backorder or becomes unavailable.

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

Next Steps

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: Salesforce B2C Commerce for Merchandisers
• Trailhead: Architecture of Salesforce B2C Commerce
• Salesforce Help: Catalogs, Categories, and Products
• Salesforce Help: Inventory Management
• Trailhead: Omnichannel Inventory