Build a B2B and B2B2C Commerce Store

Learning Objectives

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

• Explain how each implementation persona adds value to the project.
  
• List key Experience Builder tasks.
  
• Explain how team members can help each other with different aspects of a store implementation.
  
• List the elements that can help you build a D2C Commerce experience.
  

Build a Commerce Store

As you’ve learned, building a B2B and D2C Commerce Store is a team effort. The solutions architect is heavily involved during this process. Post launch, they are only brought in for major architectural changes.

Creating a store is just the beginning. Once the store launches, maintaining store data and assuring that the site remains secure, engaging, and relevant takes even more effort. These roles play an important part in the overall success of the store.

Let’s take a closer look at their tasks.

Architect Tasks

Lakita Scott is Ursa Major Solar’s third-party solutions architect. She plans and runs the project, and relies on the Ursa Major Solar employees who make up her implementation team to help her create designs systems that deliver world-class customer experiences and real business value. An architect also provides leadership in several key areas. 

As a solutions architect, Lakita is responsible for: 

• Guiding companies like Ursa Major Solar as they build multi-cloud solutions.
  
• Delivering customer experiences that differentiate them from the competition.
  
• Advising on multi-cloud implementation considerations.
  
• Recommending best practices based on use-case delivery knowledge.
  
• Choosing the multi-cloud product features that best align with a company’s vision and goals.
  

In some cases, a solution architect doesn’t have in-depth knowledge of every part of a business’s systems. Lakita, however, is familiar with a range of Salesforce clouds, products, and features, and knows how to integrate all of those systems. 

Every company needs a complete, 360-degree view of their customers–that’s where Einstein 1 comes in. This creates a single source of truth that, together with top-of-the-line customer experiences, helps Ursa Major Solar create value-driven relationships with its customers—whether they’re end consumers (D2C), other businesses (B2B), or both (D2C). 

To learn more about solution architects, check out this Quick Look.

Administration Tasks

Maria Jimenez, the admin in charge of the Salesforce org at Ursa Major Solar, will oversee its investment in B2B and D2C Commerce.

As the company expands, Ursa major Solar wants to streamline the way it orders the primary materials it uses in manufacturing. The company is betting on B2B and D2C Commerce to keep on top of all the new orders going out and materials coming in. For D2C commerce, the company wants to provide an engaging shopper experience for environment-friendly customers.

In addition to her tasks as the Salesforce admin, Maria is responsible for: 

• Setting up and configuring the profiles and permissions for all the users accessing B2B and D2C Commerce.
  
• Keeping a tight rein on security and org sharing settings, and who exactly needs to see what information in the org, in the Commerce app, and the stores.
  
• Configuring the store, including creating new page layouts.
  
• Enabling multiple currencies and languages so Ursa Major Solar can expand internationally.
  
• Creating buyer groups and associating them to a store (for B2B).
  
• Creating and mapping product catalogs and price books to the store.
  
• Setting up entitlements that define which products and prices buyers see (for B2B).
  
• Previewing, activating, and publishing the store.
  
• Creating reports and dashboards to keep on top of all the metrics in B2B and D2C Commerce.
  
• Keeping up to date with all the platform changes, and making sure they don’t affect the store.
  

What keeps Maria up at night, though? Well, for one, she has to coordinate a lot of stakeholders and make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to setting up and configuring B2B and D2C Commerce. She also has to make sure that all the end users who access the store app know what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it.

Merchandiser Tasks

Taylor Givens, senior merchandiser, appreciates the easy-to-use interface and is responsible for the store data and how it appears on the storefront. While front-end development is a team effort at Ursa Major Solar, Taylor is responsible for how the store looks. Taylor works with Wei and Maria to complete these tasks.

• Designing landing pages, templates, and the user interface
  
• Creating wireframes, sitemaps, and style sheets
  
• Maintaining cart and checkout flows (after the back-end developer has created them)
  
• Collaborating with copywriters and developers to develop digital assets
  

Part of Taylor's day-to-day task list is using Experience Builder to quickly create and style the store and its associated site to the Ursa Major Solar branding. 

With Experience Builder, Taylor customizes components that appear on each page of the store, and the pages themselves. They are essentially driving the buyers’ experience in all aspects of the store. 

• How many products will buyers see on a search result page?
  
• How much detail will the product detail page have?
  
• How many columns of products will show up on a given page?
  
• Will there be a lot of space between the product columns, or just a sliver?
  

Taylor has to think of all this and more when designing the buyers’ user experience. 

When Taylor is working in Experience Builder, here’s what the user interface looks like.  

Taylor is happy to put all the final touches on the product offerings. Without Taylor’s efforts, Ursa Major Solar products wouldn’t have the snazzy descriptions or enticing product details that make the site sing. Taylor’s main tasks are to:

• Coordinate with stakeholders about product information, and update it.
  
• Set up and modify product categories, product mixes, and placement.
  
• Work with Maria to optimize product search.
  
• Manage the launch of products.
  
• Work with a marketing manager to launch promotions.
  
• Track analytics related to products.
  

Taylor's main concerns are the concerns of merchandisers everywhere, which involve:

• Getting everyone on the same page about the right messaging to convey about products.
  
• Getting the right data to report metrics to higher-ups.
  
• Making sound decisions based on large amounts of data.
  

Here’s what the Commerce app looks like when Taylor logs into Salesforce.

From here, Taylor can easily perform all the merchandiser tasks, and reach out to Maria for help.

Developer Tasks

Wei Leung, the developer, has a lot on her mind. She’s normally busy studying the company’s business processes and creating custom solutions for a variety of roles within Ursa Major Solar.

When Ursa Major Solar invested in B2B and D2C Commerce, Wei dug into what she needed to do to support this new investment. As the developer, Wei does the following:

• Upload product data from external systems into Salesforce, especially if it involves setting up an integration.
  
• Set up and customize the checkout flow using Flow Builder.
  
• Set up integrations with external systems, including (but not limited to) integrations for product data, tax calculations, order management data, and payment authorizations. She can use Apex and managed packages to set up the integrations.
  

Taylor wants to take the Commerce store a step further by overriding some of its CSS styling and asks Wei’s help. Wei can also create new components, templates, and themes in Visual Studio Code with the SFDX (Salesforce Developer) extension. She already uses Visual Studio Code, the go-to code editor for Salesforce developers. It’s free, open-source, and available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. This editor has easy-to-install extensions for syntax highlighting, code completion, and more.

Let’s Wrap It Up

In this module, you learned how B2B and D2C Commerce run on the Salesforce platform. You learned about personas and permissions, and how each persona performs specific tasks to assure that the store remains secure, engaging, and relevant. Now take that final quiz and earn an amazing badge.

Resources 

• Trailhead: Salesforce B2B Commerce and D2C Commerce Basics
• Salesforce Help: Key Concepts
• Trailhead: Salesforce CMS Basics