Commerce Server and Shifting Retailer Priorities
Posted by Kelly in Commerce Server on August 18th, 2009
Shop.Org recently released their Merchandising Report by Forrester Research. The Merchandising Report was the second in a series called The State of Online Retailing 2009 and highlights priorities for online retailers either this calendar year or planned for calendar year 2010.
The report identifies the following areas which retailers are turning their focus toward:
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Checkout process redesign
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Improved product detail pages
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Site search results & controls
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Home page
- Better Help and FAQs
In order to help facilitate this shift in priorities, let’s take a look at how Commerce Server 2009 can be used in these areas.
Checkout Process Redesign
Retailers are looking to provide additional details around the checkout process to help prevent sticker shock once the customer arrives at the order review page. Customers often feel that shipping costs and taxes are more than expected and sometimes fail to complete the order because of this. One solution is to provide a mechanism to display proper shipping pricing, estimated shipping dates and estimated taxes within the shopping cart based on a customer’s zip or postal code. Commerce Server’s new Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation provides ways that allow developers to integrate 3rd party applications and services into the same application context. The use of Operation Sequences now allows developers to perform multiple actions on a Commerce Entity. A Basket is an example of a Commerce Entity and also contains multiple operation sequences. Custom operation sequences can be added to provide additional capabilities, which include adding functionality provided by 3rd party shipping and tax providers.
With SharePoint Commerce Services merchandisers can now reconfigure the checkout process using a SharePoint list. This custom list is created when you install SharePoint Commerce Services and allows developers to provide the capability for merchandisers or content creators to change the flow of the checkout process with pre-built checkout controls. In a production scenario, you may not allow business users to make these kinds of changes, but in the context of creating additional content, this could be quite valuable. For example, you may want to provide content creators with the ability to create micro-sites and configure the type of checkout process used for these additional sites. Another example might be to create vendor specific sites that include an easy one-step checkout process.
Product Detail Pages
Retailers are looking to provide the best possible product content to online visitors. One of the best ways to achieve this is to allow customers to rate and review products. Commerce Server 2009 now includes the ability to provide moderated product reviews using SharePoint. Add the pre-built ratings and review web part to the product detail page and allow customers to rate and review the products they purchase and provide this valuable content to future site visitors.
Commerce Server has almost always provided an easy way to tie different types of content to your products. Flexible and extensible product and category schemas allow you to create custom properties that could define additional product details, links to product manuals, warranty information and even links to product promotional videos. In addition to flexible schemas, the Catalog API provides mechanisms for adding related items to products. These related products could be cross-promotional products or accessories or take it a step further and use the relationship model for storing multiple product images or even colour swatches.
Search
Retailers are often looking to seriously beef-up their capabilities in the area product and content search; most of the time this calls for a best-of-breed search provider like Endeca or Fast. The features provided by these 3rd party enterprise search providers are unmatched when using Commerce Server’s native search for product content. However, not all retailers can afford the price tag associated with these types of packages and need to turn to something more cost-effective.
With Commerce Server 2009 and integration to SharePoint, customers can now leverage the power of SharePoint’s Enterprise Search and the combination of product content searching with Commerce Server. A pre-configured web part can be used to easily configure how search results are displayed and whether to render either static content, product content or both. This new web part is provided as part of SharePoint Commerce Services.
Home Page
The home page is a great place to display promotional ads, products on sale and other types of content. Touching again on the flexibility of the Commerce Server catalog, merchandisers can create special product categories outside of their normal merchandising hierarchy that can be used to hold special products or sale items. In the simplest example, a Product Query Web Part can be added to the home page and configured to only display items from the special products or sale items category. Taking it one step further, data can be aggregated from Commerce Server Data Warehouse to display top-rated or best-selling products; these products can then be displayed and rendered to customers using specialized categories stored in the catalog.
Product segmentation can also take the form of a micro-site, to offer customers seasonal products or products designed for a special event. SharePoint Commerce Services allows merchandisers to take advantage of SharePoint’s Enterprise Content Management features to create additional Commerce Server enabled sites with little effort. Chose from the predefined list of templates or create custom templates specific to your brand. This newly created site can contain products from an entirely new catalog, a subset of existing products and even offer the same products with an overall reduction in price.
Conclusion
The State of Online Retailing Report provides some great insight into what retailers are looking to accomplish next year. Commerce Server 2009 can provide these retailers with some compelling features and flexibility to help them meet these goals.
Commerce Server Try-It Videos
Posted by Kelly in Commerce Server on June 12th, 2009
Recently the Commerce Server Product Unit released a series of videos that give you a first-hand look at what Commerce Server 2009 can do. Yours truly had a hand at helping produce these videos (that’s ME you hear!) and if you’ve ever wondered what Microsoft Commerce Server does, then these are worth the watch.
Details on what the videos provide can be found here and here. There aren’t any details on the Product Group blog regarding the fourth video yet, but more details should be posted soon. The fourth video will demonstrate the capabilities around site design and content creation, using SharePoint Commerce Services.
The videos themselves can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/commerceserver/en/us/try-video.aspx
Did you find the videos useful?
Extensibility or Hack?
Posted by Kelly in Commerce Server on May 21st, 2009
One of the many people I follow on Twitter had this to say about Commerce Server the other day. He’s not alone. I’ve had many customers ask me this type of thing in the past but the truth is, this is the beauty of Commerce Server – its extensibility.
Let’s take a look at the idea of storing non-products in the catalog. There has always been a need to manage static, non-product information on eCommerce websites and before the native integration with SharePoint we’re seeing with Commerce Server 2009, we still needed a way to manage this type of content. Enter the Service Catalog. The Service Catalog was a really good way to manage content without implementing a full-blown CMS, something customers couldn’t/didn’t always want to do. It made sense from a management perspective, but what about the technology? The Catalog System already had an extensive API, caching and a way to persist and maintain the data. Why would I rewrite a complete system from scratch to store this new content, when I have all of the components already in place? Certainly one drawback is that all of the data, product or not, looks the same in the Catalog Manager, which likely adds fuel to the fire that is this question. My suggestion here was always to use the provided Catalog Manager source code to make the necessary changes in order to make a distinction between editing product data or other static content. What about products you provide as downloadable content or warranty products you sell associated to other products? You can create special product definitions that define these types of products, so logically, why not extend that to include other types of associated data.
If you’ve ever heard me give a presentation on Commerce Server, I always make a point to mention that the Profile System isn’t just for storing things like emails, addresses and credit cards. Why not store point balances for a loyalty program, or your store locations for a store locator? I once architected a solution for a customer that needed to use Commerce Server to maintain store credits. The solution involved some clever customizations of the Profile System, using only out-of-the-box components, API calls and some integration using BizTalk. Again, Commerce Server supplies us with tools to completely customize what a Profile looks like, so why not use it to store more than just user data?
There are many more good examples of Commerce Server extensibility, but this gives you an idea of what can be done using only what the platform provides. If the product provides the tools and the capability to customize different entities, then why not take advantage of this.
Note: I haven’t even touched on extensibility using the new Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation. That’s another post altogether.
New CS09 Sites & Cache Refresh
Posted by Kelly in Commerce Server on May 15th, 2009
One of the little snags I encountered recently while building out a new Commerce Server demo, was a problem with refreshing the site caches.
Creating a new eCommerce-enabled site in SharePoint is one of the real added bonuses of using SharePoint Commerce Services. But what if you want to Commerce-enable an existing SharePoint site or site collection? The best way to do this for a new site is to use the SharePoint Commerce Services Configuration Wizard provided with Commerce Server 2009.
What if you didn’t create your site using the wizard and want to enable eCommerce functionality on an existing SharePoint site? Or you don’t want to create a new Commerce Server site as the wizard suggests? If you look at the Commerce Server Manager you’ll notice that your existing SharePoint sites don’t show up in the applications list.
This means that even if you configure Commerce Server features correctly, a refresh site cache won’t actually refresh the data on your existing SharePoint sites. A quick fix to this is to use a URL, appending the name of the cache you want to refresh:
http://<newsitehostname>/SiteCacheRefresh.axd?CacheToRefresh=advertising
http://<newsitehostname>/SiteCacheRefresh.axd?CacheToRefresh=CatalogCache
http://<newsitehostname>/SiteCacheRefresh.axd?CacheToRefresh=discounts
The better approach is certainly to use the setup wizard, but if you find yourself trying to get rid of cached data even after refreshing the caches from the business tools, then this is a quick alternative.
New to Commerce Server 2009
Posted by Kelly in Commerce Server on April 16th, 2009
The Commerce Server Product Group released some new additions to the recently released Commerce Server 2009. Two of the updates are design focused and the other is a document describing how to localize your Commerce enabled SharePoint sites using site variations.
The first is a new template pack, that provides a much nicer look and feel to the out-of-the-box site experience. When CS2009 originally shipped, it contained what was known as the “Default Site”. This site certainly wasn’t the best looking, but all of the foundation eCommerce functionality was there and the expectation was that you’d need to add your own design elements to really make the site shine!
This new template pack provides what is now being called the “Contemporary Site” which still provides all of the foundation eCommerce functionality but looks far better out of the box. What this really means, is less time and effort to get that production-ready Commerce Server site up and running!
Not only does the template pack provide a new Contemporary Site, but also a new look and feel for the included mobile channel.
If you read my previous post on Redesigning the Default Site, you know that I certainly encountered some challenges when trying to apply my own design to the default site. I have yet to confirm whether or not some of these challenges have been addressed with this new release. Another point to mention is that the sub-pages (category, product) don’t contain the left-hand category navigation. I can’t speak to why this is, but know that you will likely want to make sure that you have left-hand category navigation throughout the site.
The other new addition is the Silverlight inline product editor. If you’re a site administrator or a merchandiser you may want to make a quick change to your product details, while in the context of your site – the inline product editor allows you to do this. Any changes made in your SharePoint site are reflected back in the Commerce Server catalog.
When browsing the site in the administrator mode (NTLM site), you’ll notice a link to edit product properties on the product detail page.
You are then presented with a Silverlight based Product Property Editor window, allowing you to make changes to the exposed product properties. Once the changes are made, clicking Apply updates the property value and the data is sent back to the catalog.
This is a huge improvement over the original Default Site. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Additional Resources
Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 Template Pack (Contemporary Site)
Microsoft Commerce Server 2009 Inline Product Property Editor
Localizing Your Commerce Server 2009 Site Using Site Variations
One Month Later
It’s been about a month since I returned from SXSW and thought that it might be interesting to highlight some more music that I’ve fallen for since coming back.
Jason Lytle, from the band Grandaddy, performed a couple of songs for NPR from his soon-to-be-released solo record. I also saw him perform in Austin, and the show was great – a nice intimate show at a church! Since coming back and listening to him a little more, I’m definitely excited for his new record.
The Shout Out Out Out Out’s performed at the Canadian Blast BBQ, that I attended but decided to leave early and missed their performance. Hearing them now, I’m very disappointed that I missed the show.
I’ve seen Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s records at my favourite music store for a while now, but only now have a strong appreciation for his music. He was the guest DJ on my favourite radio podcast, and after listening to the show I’ve added him to my list of favourites.
I didn’t see these guys perform, but I did buy their most recent record when I was in Austin and love it. This album is definitely in high-rotation on my iPod.
Redesigning the CS09 Default Site
Posted by Kelly in Commerce Server on April 7th, 2009
Recently, I had to make changes to Commerce Server 2009’s Default Site in SharePoint. If it were a perfect world, the absolute best way to do this would be to get the extensibility kit (if you have Commerce Server 2009 installed, you’ll find it here: \Program Files\Microsoft Commerce Server 2007\Microsoft Commerce Server 2009\Sdk\Samples), load it up inside Visual Studio, make the necessary changes and redeploy the web parts into the site. But it is far from being a perfect world, and given some of my time constraints and the fact that the extensibility kit has a different signing key than the web parts deployed with the Default Site, I had to find another way to do this.
Certainly you have easy access to make changes to the stylesheets, master pages and page layouts in SharePoint, but the more difficult part is making changes to the layout of the webparts themselves. Maybe you want to move a field around, or apply a specific style to one of the buttons? These are certainly use cases for applying design to a web site.
The default address list web part is a good example. You may have had a graphic designer already build your page layouts complete with HTML, graphics and CSS. I suppose you could find the styles being used and modify the existing styles to match. I chose to layout the control based on the HTML I was given and apply my new styles. Here are some snippets of the code that I modified (ReadOnlyAddressDetail.ascx is called from within AddressList.ascx):
AddressList.ascx
<fieldset>
<asp:Button ID=”ButtonBack” runat=”server” OnClick=”ButtonBack_Click” CssClass=”myaccount-green5-11″ Height=”22″ />
<asp:Button ID=”ButtonAddNewAddress” runat=”server” OnClick=”ButtonAddNew_Click” Height=”22″ CssClass=”myaccount-green5-11″ />
</fieldset>
ReadOnlyAddressDetail.ascx
<ItemTemplate>
<div id=”tablecontent”>
<table style=”vertical-align:top” cellspacing=”5″ cellpadding=”5″>
<tr>
<td style=”vertical-align:top; width:250px” class=”tdmain”>
<asp:Literal ID=”ltlFirstName” runat=”server” Text=’<%# Microsoft.Security.Application.AntiXss.HtmlEncode(FirstName) %>’ />
<asp:Literal ID=”ltlLastName” runat=”server” Text=’<%# Microsoft.Security.Application.AntiXss.HtmlEncode(LastName) %>’ /><br /><br />
<asp:Label ID=”lblDefaultBilling” Visible=’<%# IsDefaultBillingAddress %>’ runat=”server” />
<asp:Label ID=”lblSeparator” Text=” | ” Visible=’<%# IsDefaultBillingAddress && IsDefaultShippingAddress %>’ runat=”server” />
<asp:Label ID=”lblDefaultShipping” Visible=’<%# IsDefaultShippingAddress %>’ runat=”server” />
</td>
You can find most of the controls you need in the SharePoint 12-hive (\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\CommerceServer). Note that some of the controls that are used in the Default Site are XSLT controls that require modification to the XSL that renders the content. These are not found in the 12-hive but rather a templates document library in SharePoint. The Cart control is a good example of this. All of the XSLT templates can be found by clicking “View All Site Content” from the Site Actions menu in the Default Site, and then opening the Commerce Server Templates document library.
This method certainly isn’t perfect, but there are changes and bug fixes still being made which will likely become available in R2. Keep in mind that this is one approach, and certainly the better method is to use the extensibility kit if you require a more custom design or specialized functionality.
Additonal Resources
SharePoint Commerce Services documentation
Commerce Server 2009 General Availability
Posted by Kelly in Commerce Server on March 26th, 2009
The latest version of Commerce Server is now available for everyone to purchase. The official launch took place at MIX’09, Microsoft’s interactive conference, last week. Jean-Yves Martineau, Cactus’ Founder and Scott Cairney, Cactus’ VP of Product Management did a great session on creating the next-generation eCommerce experience, and introducing some of the new features of the platform. The online video for this presentation is available here.
Here are some additional links for CS 09:
The press release is available here, here and here.
There is also some great samples available to help you with programming against the new Multi-Channel Commerce Foundation and you can get that from MSDN here.
Ryan Donovan is also soliciting feedback for some items that we are planning for “R2″ of Commerce Server 2009 – specifically around OS and database support. I invite you to go visit Ryan’s blog and provide your comments.
Hipsters and Skinny Jeans, oh my!
What a great week it’s been at SXSW! I find myself feeling sad that it’s all come to an end. During the festival, walking around downtown and seeing all those people, all there for the same reason you are, they almost feel like your family! Granted, most of them were hipsters wearing skinny jeans and Ray-Ban Wayfarers, but now that it’s over you miss the skinny-jean wearing hipsters. You want to start the week over and you want the Lego back on display in the Austin Convention Centre.
Happily, this week wasn’t just about the hipsters but about some great music. Some I had heard, some I had not, but most were just fantastic! Some of the biggest surprises for me included Mother Mother, among others. I had listened to them many times before but was shocked by how great it was to watch them on stage. Ryan, the lead singer, is so animated, and Molly and Jasmin have great voices – the three of them combine to give this incredible performance!
I also caught a short performance by The Oak Ridge Boys, leading with a song containing the line “the boys are back”. Claiming to have new life injected into the band by a 32 year old producer, it sounds like the Boys are looking to make a more mainstream comeback. Their new album also contains a cover of the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army. Using Richard Sterban’s AWESOME bass voice as the rhythm section, this remake was a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to checking out the new record.
Dlugokecki was another great find (it’s pronounced Duh-lugo-keski). They performed in this small room at the Hilton, sponsored by The Bedford in London – the Bedford was there promoting UK artists. Dlugokecki was this great band with lots of energy (some softer moments too) with lots of great drums, piano, guitar and well written lyrics. After the show, I got to meet the band members and got myself an autographed CD. I’m looking forward to getting to spend some time with it when I get home.
I’ve already written about some of the great finds from the Day Stage – performers like, Mumford & Sons, Diane Birch and Emily Wells all wowed me with their music to the point where I either already bought their CD or have added them to some list. The Day Stage was a great way to sit down, recharge (physically and electronically) and have some food while enjoying some great music.
One of the other notable moments was meeting Bob Boilen from NPR’s All Songs Considered – I listen to Bob regularly for his insight into new and exciting music (a lot of what I went to see Bob and his team had recommended). Not because he directed us to where we could find tons of free NPR swag, but it was an absolute pleasure to meet him in person and listening to All Songs will be all that more enjoyable now. (I got a pin that says, “music that’s boilen hot”. How awesome is that?)
In addition to Bob, we met some other great people too. On the first day we met a couple from Manitoba that had originally planned to get married at SXSW (!!), but plans had changed and they were just there for the music. Imagine that, eloping to SXSW? I also met a guy from London, Ontario waiting in line for the Andrew Bird show to start. He had moved from Ontario to live in the south and was there for both the Interactive and Music festivals. It was really great meeting fellow Canadians who had also made the trip to discover new music!
There were some not-so-great moments as well. There’s a whole article over at NPR which cynically describes the need for credentials, badges and wristbands. Here’s an excerpt:
SXSW access is dictated by credentials. The options are, as far as I can ascertain: all access, which involves a series of laminated badges tied to a hugely ugly lanyard; artist: a hugely ugly green lenticular slap bracelet; volunteer: a fugly XXL baby blue tee-shirt and hugely ugly bracelet; and paid visitor: a hugely ugly lenticular bracelet dispensed by a volunteer with a side of bile. In order to obtain a bracelet, one must show up at the downtown convention center and queue accordingly. Like the DMV, only more depressing. Attending SXSW as a paid visitor will cost just shy of $700.
I paid the $700 and got the badge and expected I would be granted access to any and all events without question. This, most certainly, was not the case! For most larger events there were separate lines for badge holders, but there were some events where we were sent to the back of the line behind regular ticket holders and people with wristbands. Oh, and I didn’t mention the lines for “VIPs” – if $700 doesn’t qualify you as a VIP, I don’t know what does! I will certainly make my concerns known to SXSW and cross my fingers that next year will be different.
There have been times when I thought I was close to being a hipster myself, but after spending a week in Austin for SXSW I now know that I am nowhere close to being a hipster. I guess the one thing the hipsters and I have in common is the music! I am already thinking about next year’s trip and can’t wait to be back at SXSW for 2010.
Additional Resources
All Songs Considered recaps each day at SXSW
SXSW Day Stage
The Day Stage at SXSW turned out to be a great place to see bands, give my feet a rest and eat some food. I was really surprised by the quality of some of the acts performing. There were a few in particular that really caught my attention. One was Mumford & Sons. Here’s a clip from their performance:
Another was the super-cute Emily Wells, who like a few artists I saw, was doing her own loops on stage. She has a beautiful voice and combines that with some violin, a keyboard and a toy mic. (I got an autographed CD!) Here’s a clip of Emily doing a radio show in Salt Lake City:
I also had the chance to see Diane Birch perform. She claims to be a pop singer, but you can certainly here a little country in her voice. Here’s a clip of her performing on Austin’s NBC affiliate:
