SuiteCommerce is NetSuite's flagship module that provides an unparalleled experience for both organizations and ecommerce users. If you already have SuiteCommerce, then you might want to consider some of these ideas to make sure you use it and get the most bang for your buck.
SuiteCommerce Summary (Video)
- Customization to use NetSuite configuration for content management (Timestamp 0:13)
- SuiteCommerce SEO meta description (Timestamp 0:44)
- Google Search Console Errors (Timestamp 1:10)
- My Account/Customer Portal Customization (Timestamp 1:38)
- Purchase pre-built themes and extensions (Timestamp 2:07)
Tip 1: Customization Content Management
When companies are new to SuiteCommerce, they often require customization to the web store in order to have it fit their business processes. Some companies have custom themes they implement as well. It's important to ask your developer to make pieces of the web store available in the NetSuite configuration so that your internal team can swap out content without the need for a developer. To make customization available in configuration, it typically will take a little longer for a developer to finish the customization, since they have to build out the configuration piece for content management. If you have a marketing team swapping content frequently, make sure that the developer makes as much as possible available via NetSuite configuration or Site Management Tools.
Tip 2: SuiteCommerce SEO Meta Description
If you have an ecommerce website, meta descriptions are key to keeping your Google rankings high. Search engine optimization (SEO) relies on meta descriptions to tell Google the primary focus of the web page. The meta description shows up below the page title in the Google results, so it is also important to effectively demonstrate to a potential customer what your page is about. For e-commerce, meta descriptions can be automated for the product detail pages (PDP) that hold your item information. For companies that have thousands or millions of SKUs in NetSuite ERP, you will want to ensure data integrity for this particular field. It's very easy to write a short SuiteScript to auto-populate the meta description to target keywords that people search for on Google.
Tip 3: Google Search Console Errors
Since you will have product data on an ecommerce website, it's important that Google reads the product detail pages that items are located on correctly. You can use the Structured Data Testing Tool to ensure that you don't have any Google Search Console errors from item pages. Simply copy/paste your product page URL into this tool, and it will show any errors. If you see any errors, get in contact with your developer to clean them up. If you have a lot of customization in older versions of SuiteCommerce Advanced (before 2017), you may want to consider upgrading to the latest SuiteCommerce Advanced Version. Sometimes, customization on websites can get extreme and make it challenging to fix Google Search Console errors. On present SuiteCommerce, developers can use extensibility API to make sure customizations are always managed.
Tip 4: My Account / Customer Portal Customization
Business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce organizations frequently heavily rely on "My Account" to help their customers keep track of orders, see PO numbers, enter cases, and see customer-specific information. If a native feature isn't available in SuiteCommerce, the "My Account" can be customized by an SCA developer. This is one of the reasons SuiteCommerce outplays its competitors in ecommerce. It has the best B2B My Account solution will total access to NetSuite ERP.
This is an example of a customization for the portal that allows a company to display custom records in 'my account.' This feature is heavily used by B2B companies since they frequently need to display customer-specific information on the website for easy access to data.
Tip 5: Purchase Pre-Built Themes and Extensions
If you utilize NetSuite ERP or SuiteCommerce, then you need access to apps, features, and customizations that 3rd party firms or independent developers have created. You can see this new 3rd party NetSuite app platform where people list their custom solutions so that you don't have to pay a developer to build them from scratch. It's a growing platform that is fairly new, so if there isn't a customization on there now, be sure to check back frequently to see what is listed. You can also utilize SuiteApp, which is NetSuite's app platform. It is primarily focused on 3rd party software that integrates into NetSuite.
Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner & Commerce Partner
Hopefully, this post gives you something to work with while trying to understand NetSuite and what it can do for your business. If you have general questions about SuiteCommerce or more specific questions about how your business can further improve your use of SuiteCommerce, feel free to contact us at any time. Anchor Group is a certified Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner & Commerce Partner and is equipped to handle all kinds of NetSuite and SuiteCommerce projects, large or small!
FREE SuiteCommerce Book
Want to learn more about SuiteCommerce and how it can benefit your business? We'd like to gift you a FREE NetSuite Ecommerce paperback book! Here at Anchor Group, we pride ourselves on having the heart of a teacher... this is just one of the many ways that we follow through on that value. So, what are you waiting for?
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