In this 4-part blog series, we are going to look into Sitecore commerce’s marketing features. How these features work Out of The Box, and why should you care?
Sitecore Commerce (XC) combines commerce with unmatched digital marketing capabilities and content management tools of Sitecore XP. You can –
- Create engaging commerce experiences by bringing the best of XP to XC
- Track visits, behaviours, and transactions in xDB
- Benefit from 80+ Analytics reports and;
- Use built-in marketing automation.
In this post, let’s have a look at ‘Core’ Framework which enables these capabilities and allows you to integrate Sitecore XP with a Commerce platform of your choice.
Commerce Connect
‘Commerce Connect Framework’ enables the Integration between a Commerce Storefront and an External Commerce System (ECS). It has the following three components –
- ‘Commerce Connect Core’ which contains
- Commerce Services Interface – Commerce Connect Abstract Service Layers (APIs)
- Commerce Connect Engagement Artifacts
- Commerce Connect Product Catalog Model
- Commerce Connect Connectors
- These are the concrete implementation of Commerce Services Interfaces. It allows XP to connect External Commerce Systems (ECS). Commerce Engine Connect is a connector to connect to Sitecore Commerce
- Commerce Reports
Why ‘Commerce Connect Core’ Framework?
- It provides a single point of entry into the External Commerce System (ECS)
- This framework contains/executes all the engagement features of Sitecore XP
- It abstracts commerce services.
- ‘Commerce Engine Connect’ patches commerce services into ‘Commerce Connect’
- Any custom implementation should follow the same model else the marketing events and tracking will not be available.
Let us look into the above diagram in detail
- The user enters the website via Storefront
- The ‘Commerce Connect Core’ framework fires off the marketing events based on the user actions (add to cart etc.)
- The commerce actions are ‘abstracted’ in the Service Layer APIs
- The commerce actions are ‘implemented’ in Commerce Connect Connectors
- ‘Sitecore Commerce Engine Connect’ is an example of one such concrete implementation
In this blog, we looked into the Sitecore Commerce Framework, which enables the interaction between Sitecore XP and External Commerce System (ECS). In the next blog, we will investigate how Analytics works under the hood and how to extend it. Stay tuned!
Know more about Sitecore Commerce marketing Automation at Sitecore Doc Site