The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
The Aurora starter store showcases the latest in storefront features, and models best practices in store development, demonstrating a wide scope of retail scenarios. Simplify your responsive B2C or B2B direct web store implementation and reduce your time-to-market by using the Aurora starter store as your development base.
The site flows provide a screen capture and a detailed description for each store page. Store developers can use the site flows as a high-level guideline for each page to identify starting points when store pages are changed.
The Aurora starter store provides multiple layouts for the header and footer.
Creating a custom implementation of a WebSphere Commerce store requires a significant amount of planning. From gathering client needs, to deploying the live solution, much work is needed to successfully deploy a custom client store. Use the resources in here to help you plan every phase of store creation.
Review the following sections for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
Before you migrate to WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
The topics in this section describe how to publish stores to either a test or production environment, and how to deploy customized code.
Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using WebSphere Commerce in combination with other products.
WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your WebSphere Commerce instance and stores.
Using site level features, you can customize the look and feel of your storefront. Site level features are visible from every page in your store.
Category level pages in the Aurora starter store are designed to assist customers in narrowing the product selection to find the preferred item.
Product level features in the Aurora starter store are designed to provide details about a specific product in your store.
You can publish the Aurora starter store as a B2B direct store and take advantage of features that are offered by the Aurora starter store plus extra B2B capabilities. Get your B2B e-commerce site up and running faster at a lower cost by using the Aurora starter store as your starting point. With B2B-optimized features built right into the storefront, you can minimize the amount of customization that is required to provide an optimal shopping experience to your business customers.
The Aurora starter store can be used only as a storefront asset store in the Extended Sites business model. It is not possible to deploy Aurora as a stand-alone B2B or B2C store. The Aurora.sar archive contains the organization structure, predefined user roles, and access control policies necessary to create either a B2C storefront asset store or a B2B storefront asset store.
The Aurora starter store in WebSphere Commerce is completely written in jQuery 3.1.0, which is one of the most commonly used JavaScript libraries used in dynamic websites. The jQuery AJAX and events API provides an easy to use framework that meets most AJAX requirements for storefront development.
For the Aurora starter store, you can select certain functions to include in your store and disable the ones that you do not need. Use the Store Management tool in Management Center to control which functions are enabled for your store.
The Aurora starter store follows the IBM accessibility guidelines to implement accessibility features. Accessibility features help users who have a physical disability, such as a visual impairment, hearing impairment, or limited mobility, successfully use the store.
WebSphere Commerce comes with a powerful and fully integrated search function. The search functions in WebSphere Commerce provide an enriched customer experience, with features such as automatic search term suggestions and spelling correction. Since it is built on open standards, WebSphere Commerce Search is highly flexible and extensible. Starter stores can use the search engine's most sophisticated features without requiring extra customization. A key feature of Search is that sales personnel can create and manage search term associations, and search-based merchandising rules, from within the Management Center and Store view.
Responsive Web Design (RWD) is a web design approach that is aimed at crafting pages that are optimized for a wide range of devices. It advocates the use of primarily fluid layouts and media queries to optimize a site for different devices, instead of designing a separate site for each device.
The IBM Starter Store Companion Assets are a customizable set of resources that are designed to reduce the overall cost of implementation. You can use the assets to understand, customize, test, and develop your store that is based on the starter store.
Usually, new features that are introduced in feature pack releases require storefront changes. These changes can be in the form of data model changes, or modifications to the storefront JSP files to use new or updated APIs. For this reason, moving to the latest starter store is the easiest way to have newer components work on your existing store. Depending on the age and design of your site, this retrofitting can be done through several different approaches. If your site is relatively up-to-date, and you are interested in a particular feature, then you can find the migration steps for that solution or component and apply them to your store. Alternatively, you can attempt to replace the entire store with the Aurora starter store by following this set of high-level instructions.
For existing WebSphere Commerce customers who are looking to upgrade to the next release, there are a number of approaches that you can take to upgrade your store. Review your requirements, and chose the proper path to upgrade your store assets to take advantage of the supplied features in the Aurora starter store.
WebSphere Commerce extends the Dojo AJAX and events API, providing an easy to use framework that meets most AJAX requirements for storefront development.
Developing and maintaining store pages can become an efficient and consistent process by following the general practices that are used in existing Aurora starter store pages.
Site flows provide a comprehensive layout of each store page and explain how pages relate to one another. Use the site flow topics to understand the standard and optional functions of each page, and to learn how to get data into the page.
The responsive B2C header and footer are consistent throughout the store. The header contains a link to the Sign In / Register panel, the catalog browsing menu, the search field with the top category navigation menu, the mini shopping cart, the Quick Links panel, and links to various store pages. The footer includes links to more store pages, such as the Site Map page and the Privacy Policy page.
The responsive B2B header and footer are consistent throughout the store. The header contains a link to the Sign In / Register panel, the catalog browsing menu, the search field with the top category navigation menu, the mini shopping cart, the Quick Links panel, and links to various store pages. The footer includes links to more store pages, such as the Site Map page and the Privacy Policy page.
Catalog browsing flows describe pages that your customers use to browse and search categories and products on your storefront.
The term content page refers to a store page that is managed in the Commerce Composer tool but that is not a catalog page. An example is the About Dress Designer page.
Checkout flows describe pages that your customers use to complete the checkout process.
The site flows provide a screen capture and description for each store page that includes Apple Pay on the Web functions.
The My Account flows describe pages your customers use to register with the online store and maintain their account with the store. The My Account pages include the account summary, personal information, address book, personal wish lists, coupons, orders, order details, and browsing history. Certain pages are optional and are available to customers only if your store chooses those functions.
IBM Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce provides customer service enhancements that enable a customer service representative (CSR) to resolve common issues and capture orders. These capabilities are built into the WebSphere Commerce Aurora storefront and enable a CSR to complete key tasks on behalf of a guest and registered customers for both B2B and B2C stores. Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce is offered for both Professional and Enterprise editions.
The Additional flows describe the supplementary pages that are required to maintain your online store.
In the B2B direct business model, each company that purchases from your store must have one or more registered users who are assigned the Buyer Administrator role. Buyer Administrators administer the company's organizations, and they manage the company's buyers, including assigning roles and approving new buyers who register. The Aurora starter store provides a series of self-serve pages for Buyer Administrators to do their work directly in the storefront, rather than using the Organization Administration Console.
During organization setup, order approvals and contracts can be configured to set the criteria that determines which orders require approval. When order approvals are enabled, a Buyer Approver or Buyer Administrator must approve orders that exceed the order total limit that is specified in the contract before orders are submitted for processing. The Aurora starter store contains pages in which Buyer Approvers and Buyer Administrators can view and manage order approvals.
The buy-on-behalf-of feature allows a Buyer Administrator to shop on behalf of a buyer in the same organization. After signing in to buy on behalf of a specific buyer, the Buyer Administrator sees the store exactly the way that buyer would see the store. The Buyer Administrator can then lock an order and proceed to create, modify, or view the buyer's information such as saved orders, order history, and requisition lists. When an order is locked, a symbol appears beside the order number.
You can enable punch-out payment in starter stores. Punch-out payment is a payment model where a third-party payment service provider processes payments for orders.
Use the power of the world's biggest social media community to spread the word on products or your store with embedded Facebook Like or Send/Share buttons.
Apple Pay on the Web integration with WebSphere Commerce provides you with an easy and secure way to accept and process payments. Apple Pay on the Web enables customers to purchase products in the Aurora starter store with a single touch in Safari on Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
After you install and configure the software components for the WebSphere Commerce and Sterling Configurator integration, test the integration with sample data and sample procedures.
WebSphere Commerce provides a test assets package that contains documentation and tools to help introduce, plan, and run Functional Verification Testing (FVT) for your store.
Use an extended sites starter store to get started on setting up an extended sites solution that will allow your selling organization to provide unique storefronts for different enterprise customers or showcase a number of branded storefronts.
A sample store is for learning purposes and some tutorials can use a sample store. Do not use a sample store as the base for building your site. Sample stores might not be accessible or translated.
The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
The following section describes how you can leverage WebSphere Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.