Learn About the B2C Commerce Shopping Experience
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- List two Salesforce B2C Commerce storefront elements a shopper can click to navigate.
- List two types of content used to showcase products.
- Describe how products are typically organized in a B2C Commerce storefront.
- Describe one search feature that helps shoppers find products.
- List privileges that logged-in shoppers have.
Introduction
We shop online more and more these days. It’s fun, it’s fast, and it’s convenient.
If you completed the Commerce Cloud Basics and Commerce Cloud Features modules here on Trailhead, you know that B2C Commerce powers the online shopping experience for 2,000-plus websites. You may have shopped at some of these sites yourself. And maybe your company uses—or is planning to use—Commerce Cloud to provide a unified experience for your customers, whether they’re shopping in a brick-and-mortar store or online.
In this module, you’ll learn what ecommerce is and how B2C Commerce helps you delight the customers who buy your products online. After you earn this badge, you’ll better understand what your stakeholders—partners, admins, developers, and merchandisers—are talking about when they talk about B2C Commerce.
We build B2C Commerce storefront applications with the shopper in mind. We want shoppers to get what they want, return again and again, and tell their friends and family what a great experience they had. Providing an online shopping experience that’s fun, fast, and easy makes everyone happy.
To understand how B2C Commerce works, let’s look at a typical shopping experience. As you imagine yourself preparing for a vacation trip, we’ll explain some key terms in the ecommerce vocabulary, and make them bold so you can’t miss them.
The Shopper’s View
Let’s say you’re treating yourself to a tropical vacation next month. You’ve done a little surfing on other vacation trips, and you’re curious about riding the waves in a new location. Maybe you’ll discover when you get there that the waves are a tad out of your league. Maybe you’ll go to nice quiet reef instead and play with the tropical fish and the green sea turtles.
Whatever you do, you’re going to have a great time, and you need some fabulous gear!
You take a deep breath, log in to your smartphone or computer, and open a cool site called BeachCloud that sells beach products.
You click the Apparel tab, then the tile that says Bathing Suits. There are other tabs, such as Accessories, but you ignore those for now.
Like many B2C Commerce storefronts, the BeachCloud site organizes products by category, and each category has a tab. When you click a tab to see products in that category, you’re navigating the site.
You don't see what you want, so you enter stripd bathing suit into the search field. Woops, typo!
But then you see a page that asks if you really meant “striped bathing suit.” And there’s a link.
This is called searching.
You click the link and a pink striped bathing suit displays on the very first page. It’s just what you’re looking for.
You hover your mouse over the image and it zooms in, showing more details. You’re viewing product content.
You click a video link and see a model wearing the suit and moving so you can see it from different angles. The video is also content.
The suit looks just right. You select your size and click Buy.
Now you’re on a roll. You click the Accessories tab and see tiles for footwear, towels, and sunglasses. You click the Towels tile and select a big, thirsty-looking towel with bright stripes, then click Buy.
You spy a panel at the top of the page that says, “All Surfboards Half Off.”
This is a promotion with a fabulous discount.
It’s your lucky day. You click the panel to open a page showing a whole lot of surfboards. You pick one with red and pink stripes and click Buy.
You notice other sale announcements on the page. Even though they’re tempting, you’re done shopping, so you click the Cart link at the top of the page, which opens a list of your selections. As you look at all the stuff you’re about to buy, you remember that you do need some flip-flops. You click the Accessories tab (those tabs are always there, no matter where you are on the BeachCloud site) and then the Footwear tile.
Beneath each item there’s text saying, “BOGO,” for Buy One Get One free.
The BOGO offer is another discount.
You choose two pairs of flip-flops and click Buy.
You go back to your cart and view your new list, which now includes the flip-flops.
You didn't know it when you made your original choices, but the bathing suit comes with a free bag. There’s a link to choose the bag you want beneath the bathing suit line item. You click the link, pick the yellow bag, and click Choose. Your bag is now listed beneath the bathing suit in the cart.
Checkout is fast and easy.
You enter your name and address, click Same as Billing, enter your credit card information, and select a shipping method. Because you’re in no rush, BeachCloud waives the shipping fee. Your order looks great, and you have free shipping. You’re happy. You click Place Order.
You’re back at the front page and you spy a pair of goggles. It’s too late to add to your order now, but maybe you’ll add the goggles to your wish list. You wonder if you should create a BeachCloud account so you get more cool deals that help you save up for your next vacation.
People who create accounts at an ecommerce site can log in whenever they shop there. Logged-in shoppers have special privileges like wish lists and saved payment information that save them time and make them feel special.
Now, all you have to do is start packing for your trip.
Let's Put It All Together
The shopping experience we just described probably looks familiar to you, even if some of the terminology we highlighted is new. In the next unit, we talk about those key concepts as they relate to specific B2C Commerce features and components.
Resources