In our post-pandemic market, customers demand more from ecommerce businesses than ever. They expect high-quality products, on-time shipping, prompt customer service, and reliable returns.
Navigating through ecommerce software that solves for customer satisfaction while keeping your business backend efficient and predictably scalable is challenging.
Thankfully, you can harness NetSuite’s robust platform for your ecommerce business. However, it’s important to tailor the system to meet your unique business needs and understand NetSuite’s advantages over platforms like Shopify and Adobe Commerce.
Let’s delve into the world of NetSuite custom ecommerce solutions, find the right customizable option, and explore advanced features to help you level up your business.
Choosing the Right NetSuite Ecommerce Platform
NetSuite offers two major ecommerce platforms, SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced, that cater to businesses of various sizes. The seamless integration with NetSuite ERP sets these options apart from other ecommerce platforms, providing you with a unified platform for managing your entire business operations. Both platforms allow you to:
- Quickly build reports and dashboards to get real-time visibility into your sales
- Deliver a B2C experience to your B2B customers
- Rapidly go to market with your website and build on it with marketplace extensions
However, there are key distinctions between SuiteCommerce, SuiteCommerce Advanced, and Site Builder (NetSuite’s legacy ecommerce solution).
SuiteCommerce
SuiteCommerce is NetSuite’s ecommerce platform that combines the features of Site Builder and SuiteCommerce Advanced (SCA) ecommerce platforms.
It offers businesses features, including responsive design, HTTPS, SEO optimization, configurable themes, drag-and-drop features in the back-end, marketplace templates, quick edits, and basic customization capabilities.
SuiteCommerce keeps data within the umbrella NetSuite ERP platform, establishing a single source of truth across all your data related to your ecommerce business.
SuiteCommerce Advanced
With SuiteCommerce Advanced (SCA), you can access advanced features, code, and customization options that enable you to create a more tailored and engaging ecommerce platform.
In addition, SuiteCommerce Advanced seamlessly combines ecommerce with core NetSuite operational business systems. It offers a unified view of customers, orders, inventory, and other crucial business data to facilitate personalized and relevant experiences, providing your ecommerce business with an optimal, robust omnichannel experience.
SuiteCommerce Vs. SuiteCommerce Advanced
Key differences between SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce Advanced lie in each platform’s feature set, customization options, development tools, scalability, and pricing. Let’s take a look at each difference.
Feature Set
SuiteCommerce Advanced offers a more robust and feature-rich set of functionalities compared to SuiteCommerce.
SCA includes advanced features unavailable in SuiteCommerce, such as multisite management, advanced promotions and pricing, flexible checkout options, and customizable search and navigation.
Customization Options
SuiteCommerce Advanced offers more extensive customization options compared to SuiteCommerce.
With SuiteCommerce Advanced, you have complete control over the front-end design and layout by utilizing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It also provides access to NetSuite's SuiteScript, a powerful scripting language, for customizing the behavior and functionality of the ecommerce site.
SuiteCommerce, while customizable to some extent, does not give you access to the complete codebase. It mostly consists of pre-built themes that you can modify to suit your brand and products.
Development Tools
SuiteCommerce Advanced gives you more advanced development tools and resources for developers.
It offers the SuiteCommerce Advanced Developer Toolkit, which unlocks complete code editing, debugging, and deployment. Essentially, the possibilities are endless with SuiteCommerce Advanced, as you can build and integrate to your heart’s content.
SuiteCommerce, although it supports basic customizations, does not grant you access to the same level of development tools and resources.
Scalability
SuiteCommerce Advanced is designed to handle high-volume and complex ecommerce operations. It provides scalability and performance optimizations to support growing businesses with large catalogs, high traffic, and multiple storefronts.
SuiteCommerce, while suitable for smaller businesses and simpler ecommerce needs, may need to be improved when handling larger volumes of transactions.
Pricing
SuiteCommerce Advanced typically has higher licensing and implementation costs compared to SuiteCommerce. The advanced features, customization options, and scalability capabilities of SuiteCommerce Advanced can justify the higher price point — depending on your business setup.
If you’re a current NetSuite customer, book a call with us to get help with ecommerce customizations tailored to your business needs.
A Quick Note on Site Builder
NetSuite Site Builder is a limited ecommerce solution. It was originally designed as NetSuite’s entry-level ecommerce platform. Site Builder is currently unavailable for new customers because it is in its phase-out process. Certain features, including pre-built website templates, shopping carts, and gateway functions, are anticipated to be discontinued in the future.
The Bottom Line
If you want complete control over your ecommerce site, choose SuiteCommerce Advanced. The difference in price from SuiteCommerce becomes moot when you expand your margins and increase sales by running a tailor-made selling machine.
Customizing Your NetSuite Ecommerce Experience
The key to NetSuite's ecommerce success lies in creating a personalized, reliable customer experience. Customizing your NetSuite ecommerce platform can significantly enhance the overall customer experience and drive conversions, from user interface design to tailored product recommendations.
As part of the NetSuite ERP, you can align your backend operations to your NetSuite ecommerce store. NetSuite covers the entire customer lifecycle, from sales to services and support. It consolidates data into a single repository to empower informed decision-making and better management of inventory, orders, and customer interactions.
Personalization and Customer Engagement
Personalization and customer engagement are essential aspects of a successful NetSuite ecommerce solution. You can tailor the customer experience through various methods, such as creating personalized product recommendations, offering customized promotions, and displaying dynamic content to logged-in users.
Examples of ecommerce personalization include product recommendations, user-generated content, and segment-based shopping suggestions.
NetSuite’s ecommerce platform offers a wide range of features to create a unique and engaging online shopping experience for customers. These features include image galleries, product comparisons, faceted navigation, advanced site search, social sharing, and ratings and reviews.
SuiteCommerce developers can help businesses already using NetSuite to leverage these features to create a personalized, engaging, and user-friendly websites.
Streamlined Order Management
A customer places an order from your ecommerce site. What happens next?
With NetSuite, you can automate the order-to-cash process, integrating with sales and finance to streamline the fulfillment process and manage support requests.
The Quote feature, a key feature of SuiteCommerce websites, generates transaction records that can be easily accessed and managed in NetSuite.
By optimizing order management processes, businesses can enhance efficiency, reduce shipping costs, and ensure on-time delivery for a more satisfied customer base.
Seamless Integration with Third-Party Platforms (Amazon, eBay, etc.)
Integrating your NetSuite ecommerce platform with third-party platforms can help you increase your margins on platforms like Amazon and eBay, which take a significant bite of your profits. Automate the entire process, from sale to service, to cut costs and put dollars back into your business.
When integrating with external APIs, it’s crucial to ensure the API is secure and the data is properly encrypted. It’s also essential to thoroughly test the integration before deploying it to production.
Implementing Advanced Features for NetSuite Ecommerce
NetSuite ecommerce offers a variety of advanced features that can significantly enhance the user experience and drive sales. These features include advanced search and navigation, dynamic pricing and promotions, and customer loyalty programs.
In the following sections, we will explore these advanced features in more detail and discuss how they can be implemented on your NetSuite ecommerce platform to drive sales and customer engagement.
Advanced Search and Navigation
Advanced search and navigation features include autocomplete, faceted search, and a visually appealing navigation menu.
Additionally, having a well-structured product catalog with intuitive filters and search capabilities is essential. Incorporating these features can assist customers in locating the products they are searching for promptly and effortlessly, thus creating a more intuitive and user-friendly experience to drive revenue.
Dynamic Pricing and Promotions
Modify prices and extend discounts to customers in accordance with demand, customer preferences, and data-driven insights. Dynamic pricing and promotions can enhance sales, profits, and customer loyalty.
Proven strategies for dynamic pricing and promotions include offering discounts to customers based on their purchase history, providing discounts to customers who refer friends, and incentivizing customers who purchase multiple items.
Customer Loyalty Programs
Recognize your customers’ loyalty and motivate them to make repeat purchases. You can offer rewards such as discounts, free shipping, or exclusive access to products.
Partnering with a NetSuite Developer Team for Custom Ecommerce Solutions
If you’re already up and running on NetSuite, reach out to The Green Team to work with expert NetSuite developers for custom ecommerce solutions. We can help you properly install NetSuite so you can gain control of data, sales transactions, and payments for your ecommerce store.
Our team of NetSuite developers can execute complex website customizations, website designs, and implementation services to meet your requirements.
Our NetSuite developers can also offer sustained assistance for custom ecommerce solutions, such as troubleshooting, upkeep, and upgrades.
Ongoing Support and Maintenance
Developing a maintenance plan, documenting the system and its components, adopting a test-driven development approach, using source control and version management, and regularly monitoring and evaluating system performance are recommended for ongoing support and maintenance.
By investing in ongoing support and maintenance, you can ensure the long-term success of their custom NetSuite ecommerce solution.
If you’re a current NetSuite customer looking to implement a custom version of SuiteCommerce or SuiteCommerce Advanced, contact our NetSuite customization experts — we’d be happy to help.
