Home
Documentation
HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. 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. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
Operating
Topics in the Operating category highlight tasks that are typically performed by business users, customer support representatives, to complete their day-to-day tasks in the operation of the HCL Commerce site.
Management Center for HCL Commerce
The Management Center for HCL Commerce, is a suite of tools to support store management, merchandising, and marketing tasks for business users (Sellers, Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Catalog Managers, and others).
Marketing tool
Use the Marketing tool in Management Center to create and manage marketing campaigns and other store content, excluding catalog content. You can use the extensive precision marketing features in the tool to deliver targeted marketing messages to customers.
Managing marketing experiments
Marketing experiments are managed by Marketing Managers. They are used to test the effectiveness of brand or promotional messages on the web.
Marketing experiments
Marketing experiments enable Marketing Managers to run alternative paths within existing web activities to determine whether small changes might improve the effectiveness of a web activity.

Documentation
HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. 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. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
- Getting started
  HCL Commerce has different advantages for business users, administrators and developers. HCL Commerce targets each of these roles with a tailored set of offerings so that each of your users can get maximum benefit.
- Installing and deploying
  Learn how to install and deploy HCL Commerce development environments and HCL Commerce production environments.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to HCL Commerce Version 9, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
- Operating
  Topics in the Operating category highlight tasks that are typically performed by business users, customer support representatives, to complete their day-to-day tasks in the operation of the HCL Commerce site.
  - Management Center for HCL Commerce
    The Management Center for HCL Commerce, is a suite of tools to support store management, merchandising, and marketing tasks for business users (Sellers, Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Catalog Managers, and others).
    - Management Center keyboard shortcuts
      Use the Management Center keyboard shortcuts to access user interface functions or complete tasks, using a single key or combination of keys.
    - Working in extended site stores in Management Center
      If your company operates an extended site, you can perform certain tasks directly from your extended site store within Management Center.
    - Manage content externally for use in Management Center
      If content management capabilities other than the functionality that is provided by default with HCL Commerce is required, HCL Commerce can be integrated with IBM Web Content Manager. If HCL Commerce is integrated with IBM Web Content Manager, you can use content from IBM Web Content Manager content libraries with Management Center objects.
    - ***
    - Management Center user interface
      The Management Center user interface provides a usable, intuitive, and efficient way to complete your business tasks.
    - Using the Management Center
      The starting point for all Management Center tasks is to open the tooling. Afterward, you can use several methods to complete a task: by selecting menu options, by clicking toolbar buttons, by right-clicking and selecting menus, or by keyboard shortcuts.
    - Catalogs tool
      Use the Catalogs tool in Management Center to manage catalogs, categories, catalog entries, merchandising associations, product attributes, and attachments in your store. The Catalogs tool lets business users create, and manage online catalogs. Catalogs provide a way of organizing the products that you want to sell. You define catalog data in groups of categories and products. Catalog data contains descriptions and pricing information for products and services.
    - Marketing tool
      Use the Marketing tool in Management Center to create and manage marketing campaigns and other store content, excluding catalog content. You can use the extensive precision marketing features in the tool to deliver targeted marketing messages to customers.
      - Managing web and dialog activities
        Web and dialog activities are used to deliver brand or promotional messages to customers through a variety of methods.
      - Managing email activities
        Email activities are managed by Marketing Managers to keep a site's targeted marketing efforts organized.
      - Managing marketing experiments
        Marketing experiments are managed by Marketing Managers. They are used to test the effectiveness of brand or promotional messages on the web.
        Creating marketing experiments
        Marketing experiments ensure that your brand and promotional messages are as effective as possible. You can create experiments in different places in a web activity flow to test different elements.
        Viewing the statistics of an experiment
        You can view the statistics for experiments while they are running, to determine how the experiment is progressing. You can also view the statistics for completed experiments.
        Selecting the winning path for an experiment
        When your experiment is complete, you must select the most successful path in the web activity to use going forward. You can determine the winning path based on the default statistics that WebSphere Commerce collects, or based on data from some other analytics provider.
        Changing marketing experiments
        You can update a marketing experiment to correct errors or adjust strategy.
        Deleting marketing experiments
        Deleting your marketing experiments removes completed or inactive experiments from their parent activities in the Management Center.
        Suspending and resuming experiments
        Experiments can exist in the store in two states: running or suspended. You can suspend an experiment if you want the experiment paths in the web activity to become inactive.
        Listing activities with experiments
        You can add a column to the Activities - List that shows which activities contain experiments. This column is hidden by default.
        Listing activity versions
        You can view any of the versions of a web activity that are stored in a database. This helps keep track of changes that have been made as a result of an experiment.
        Marketing experiments
        Marketing experiments enable Marketing Managers to run alternative paths within existing web activities to determine whether small changes might improve the effectiveness of a web activity.
        Experiment statistics collection and calculation
        Understanding how the server collects and calculates statistics for the test elements in your marketing experiments can help you evaluate the results of the experiment.
      - Managing custom activity templates
        To save time, create custom activity templates to use as a starting point for creating web and dialog activities.
      - Managing activity statistics
        The Marketing tool gathers and displays various types of statistical data about your web, dialog, and email activities.
      - Managing marketing content
        Marketing content is managed by marketing managers. It is used to deliver marketing messages to customers, as part of campaign activities.
      - Managing customer segments
        Marketing Managers create customer segments to use as targets for marketing campaigns and promotions.
      - Managing e-Marketing Spots
        Marketing Managers create and manage e-Marketing Spots, to ensure that store pages are filled with relevant and compelling images and information.
      - Managing feeds for e-Marketing Spots
        For e-Marketing Spots, feeds provide a means to syndicate marketing information for display in feed readers.
      - Managing email templates
        Email templates, managed by Marketing Managers, are the basis of email activities delivered to customers.
      - Working with campaigns
        Campaigns are managed by Marketing Managers, in order to keep a store's marketing activities organized.
      - Managing search rules
        Search rules provide a means to deliver customized search results and ordering when customers search the storefront.
      - Managing search rule experiments
        Search rule experiments are managed by Marketing Managers. They are used to test the effectiveness of search rules.
      - Organizing marketing objects with folders
        You can use the Management Center Marketing tool to create and manage folders for organizing your marketing content, customer segments, activities, and e-Marketing Spots. By using marketing folders to group and organize your marketing objects you can simplify browsing for and managing your marketing objects.
      - Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
        Find answers to some frequently asked questions about using key features of the Marketing tool and completing tasks.
      - Troubleshooting
        If you encounter issues while you are using the Marketing tool, review troubleshooting information to solve common problems.
    - Promotions tool
      Use the Promotions tool in Management Center to create and manage promotions that support the marketing campaigns for your site.
    - Attachments tool
      As a Product Manager, Marketing Manager, or Category Manager, you can use the Attachments tool to manage URLs that point to marketing image files, catalog image files, PDF documents, and multimedia files that you use in marketing campaigns.
    - Catalog Filter and Pricing tool
      Use the Catalog Filter and Pricing tool in Management Center to create and manage catalog filters, price lists, and price rules. Sellers, Sales Managers, and Account Representatives can use the tool's flexible features to implement catalog filtering and pricing strategies that meet the site's business needs over time.
    - Installments tool
      Use the Installments tool in Management Center to create and manage installment rules that support the payment methods for your site.
    - Commerce Composer tool
      Create pages and build layouts for your store directly in Management Center without involving IT by using the Commerce Composer tool. Take advantage of the tool's page design and management functions to improve your productivity and give you more control over the customer experience.
    - Store Management tool
      As a Seller, Site Administrator, or Channel Manager, you can use the Store Management tool in Management Center to manage your stores. The Store Management tool in Management Center replaces all of the store management features in HCL Commerce Accelerator, except store creation and the ability to suspend and resume stores.
    - Workspace Management tool
      The Workspace Management tool is a graphical user interface tool that is used to manage workspaces and workspace-related activities. It provides a single view across all workspaces and all tasks in the workspaces where managers can see how work is progressing.
    - Previewing a store
      Preview your store to ensure that changes made in Management Center show up in your store as expected. You can use store preview in production, authoring, and staging environments.You can use store preview within the authoring instances for any of your environments. Do not use store preview within the live instance of your HCL Commerce on Cloud environments.
    - Management Center frequently asked questions (FAQ)
      Find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the Management Center.
    - Management Center Troubleshooting
      If you encounter issues with the Management Center that are not related to any specific tool, review this troubleshooting topic to solve common problems.
  - HCL Commerce Accelerator
    Use the HCL Commerce Accelerator to maintain online stores.
  - HCL Customer Service for HCL Commerce JSP stores
    HCL Customer Service for HCL 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 HCL 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 HCL Commerce is offered for both Professional and Enterprise editions.
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using HCL Commerce in combination with other products.
- Administering
  Topics in the Administering category highlight tasks that are typically performed by the Site Administrator, to support daily operations of the HCL Commerce site.
- Customizing
  The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
- Tutorials
  HCL Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your HCL Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
  Topics in the Samples category highlight the various samples that are provided with HCL Commerce.
- Compliance
  The following section describes how you can leverage HCL Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of HCL Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
  Topics in the Performance section describe the means by which to plan, implement, test, and re-visit the optimization of HCL Commerce site performance.
- Troubleshooting
  Topics in the Troubleshooting section highlight common issues that are encountered with HCL Commerce, and how they can be addressed or mitigated.
- Reference
  Topics in the Reference section contain all of the HCL Commerce reference documentation.

Marketing experiments

Marketing experiments enable Marketing Managers to run alternative paths within existing web activities to determine whether small changes might improve the effectiveness of a web activity.

You can add an experiment to a web activity to deliver an alternative marketing message. An experiment can include an experimental version of any marketing element, such as a target customer segment, an e-Marketing Spot used to deliver the marketing message, or the marketing content. You create experiments by editing existing web activities. By changing a single element on an experimental branch, you can experiment with these aspects:

The content or recommendations that the web activity displays
The target customer segment
The e-Marketing Spot in which the web activity displays
The web activity displayed in a particular e-Marketing Spot

In the Management Center, experiments are created in the Activity Builder, and are represented as optional paths through the web activity.
Screen capture of a simple content experiment

Screen capture of a simple content experiment

The optional paths are called experiment paths, while the original path is called the control path. A web activity can have more than one experiment path.

After the experiment is complete, you can compare results between the experiment path and the control path using the Statistics tab in the properties view for the experiment:
Experiment statistics screen capture

Experiment statistics screen capture

These results help determine whether the current marketing effort is effectively maximizing revenue by targeting the right audience with the most appropriate message. If not, incorporating the experiment path into the control activity might improve the efficiency of the marketing message.

HCL Commerce Enterprise In an extended site model, the statistics reflect the results in the current store. If the activity is defined in the asset store, then each store accumulates its individual statistics. In this way, you can evaluate the effectiveness of the same experiment in different stores.