Exploring the Merchant Center
Understand the sample data to know how to adapt it to your needs.
Composable Commerce comes with sample data out of the box on creation of a Project. The sample date provided is curated to reflect realistic commerce scenarios for a fictitious shop, The Good Store, offering home decoration and furniture products. But no matter which products you sell, the sample data helps showcase and understand the capabilities of Composable Commerce for B2C retail.
With our business tooling, Merchant Center, you can get a good overview of the provided sample data. But, if you're more inclined to use APIs, get your API Client before you can start using our APIs.
To get started with Composable Commerce, the workflow is as follows:
Project configuration
The Project settings let you manage the countries and currencies your products will be available in, languages and shipping methods your customers can chose, international tax settings, and your supply and distribution channel setup.
To view the settings for your Project in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings.
Internationalization
To showcase internationalization options, the sample data set supports Germany, the UK, and the US.
Countries
The countries set up for your Project determine where your products can be sold. It also lets you set up different tax categories and prices for each country, allowing a single site to serve different countries and/or geographic regions. The countries set up in the sample data include Germany (DE), the United Kingdom (GB), and the United States (US).
You can change the languages in the Project settings.
Currencies
To support the three countries, the following currencies are set up in the sample data: Euros (EUR), British Pounds (GBP), and US Dollars (USD). You can use these currencies when adding prices, configuring taxes and shipping costs, or setting up promotions.
Languages
Localizable fields can store values for each language that is set up for your Project. The sample data has German (de-DE), British English (en-GB), and American English (en-US) readily set up.
Zones
Zones are used to group countries that share Shipping Methods and costs.
The Zones set up in the sample data include the following:
EU and UK: includes Germany (DE) and the United Kingdom (GB)USA: includes only United States (US)
Taxes
To view tax settings in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings > Taxes.
Tax Categories determine how your products are taxed in different countries. You can assign one Tax Category to each Product, specifying which tax to apply. Each Tax Category has Tax Rates that determines the tax percentage for a country. The Tax Category set up in the sample data, Standard Tax Category, includes Tax Rates for the countries set up for your Project. Tax Rates are defined as decimal numbers; 19% is set as 0.19. The Tax Rates for Germany and the UK are 0.19 and 0.2, respectively. The US has two Tax Rates, 0.475 and 0.4, for two of its states—North Carolina and New York.
The US tax setup is for illustrative purposes only and not representative of an actual tax setup. Taxes for complex countries like the US are best implemented using a third-party tax provider. To override the basic tax for an advanced tax calculation, you can integrate a third-party tax calculation provider.
If you want all prices of your Products in this Tax Category to be tax inclusive (gross prices), select Included in price. This is well suited for countries like the UK and member states of the EU. If you want to display net prices, as is common for B2B or certain countries, do not select Included in price for the specific Tax Rate.
Shipping Methods
To view Shipping Methods in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings > Shipping methods.
The sample data contains two Shipping Methods: US Delivery for the USA, and Standard Delivery and Express Delivery for the EU and UK. Each Shipping Method has an assigned Zone and Tax Category, Standard Tax Category, since tax also applies to shipping costs.
Channels
To view Channels in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings > Channels.
The sample data includes two Channels:
Distribution Channel: to set different prices for the same SKU (with each Channel having a corresponding Price).Inventory Channel: to represent a warehouse, a distribution hub, a physical retail space, and track different stock levels for the same SKU (with each Channel having its own inventory management capability).
For the above-mentioned purposes to be effective, each Channel has a role assigned to it. The role for Distribution Channel and Inventory Channel are Product Distribution and Inventory Supply, respectively.
Stores
To view Stores in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings > Stores.
A Store can be used to model physical retail locations, brand stores, or country-specific stores, and can hold its own products, customers, carts, and orders. It can be used to define the subset of resources available for a store.
The sample data includes one Store, The Good Store, and does not limit the availability of any products, customers, carts, and orders (of the Project) on the Store.
Product data model
The product data model in Composable Commerce contains the following elements: Product Types, Attributes, Products, Product Variants, Categories.
To view the Product Types and Attributes in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Product types and attributes.
The sample data includes three Product Types: Furniture and decor, Bedding Bundle, and Product sets.
Products and pricing
To view the Products that are part of the sample data set, in the Merchant Center, go to Products > Product list. The sample Products contain localized information in English and German. Most Products have multiple variants, and each SKU or Product Variant has individual prices and inventory availability.
For example, the Cotton Silk Bedsheet Product has nine variants, each with its own pricing specific for each country. You can view the variants in the Variants tab of a selected Product. The CSKW-093 Product Variant is priced at €15.99, £15.99, and $15.99 for orders specific to Germany, the UK, and the US.
For pricing, the Products Variants use Embedded Prices. You can view the prices in the Prices tab of a selected Product Variant.
You can choose between Embedded or Standalone Prices in Composable Commerce, or decide to use an external pricing solution.
To add Standalone Prices, you can use the Merchant Center.
Categories
To view Categories in the Merchant Center, go to Categories > Category list.
Categories group Products in hierarchical structures to organize navigation in a storefront.
The sample date includes four main categories, each with its own subcategories:
Discounts configuration
Product discounts
To view Product Discounts in the Merchant Center, go to Discounts > Product discount list.
Product Discounts are used to present a reduced price next to a stricken out original price on Product List Pages (PLPs) or Product Detail Pages (PDPs).
The sample data includes two Product Discounts:
15% Off All Armchairs, which discounts all Products in theArmchairsCategory by 15%.5 EUR Off All Bakeware Items, which discounts all Products in theBakewareCategory by 5 EUR.
Cart discounts
To view Cart Discounts in the Merchant Center, go to Discounts > Cart discount list.
Cart Discounts are used to discount all or some items in a cart. It can be used for promotions like buy-one-get-one-free (BOGO), free gifts, or free shipping.
The sample data includes two Cart Discounts:
Buy One Item of Furniture and Receive the Second for Free, which offers the cheaper item of TypeFurniture and decorfor free, when at least two items of this Type exist in the Cart. This discount requires a discount code.Free Shipping when you spend 100 GBP, which applies free shipping to an Order shipped to the UK when the Cart value is 100 GBP or more.
Discount codes
To view Discount Codes in the Merchant Center, go to Discounts > Discount code list.
Also known as promo codes or coupon codes, Discount Codes can be shared with customers. When the customer enters the correct code during checkout, they can receive a Cart Discount.
The sample data includes one Discount Code, BOGO. When it's used during checkout, the linked Cart Discount, Buy One Item of Furniture and Receive the Second for Free, takes effect on the Cart.
Customers and Orders management
To view customers in the Merchant Center, go to Customers > Customer list.
The sample data includes six customers, two for each country. While you can create Customers in the Merchant Center, they usually register through your storefront. The Merchant Center also lets you change Customer data, or assign them to Customer Groups, for example, bonus card or other loyalty programs.
On the Addresses tab, you can view or manage shipping and billing addresses of the Customer. The country in the shipping address will be used to calculate the shipping costs for deliveries to this address.
On the Orders tab, you'll find all Orders placed by the Customer. You can find an Order for each Customer in the sample data. You can add additional Orders using the Merchant Center, but similar to Customer registrations, new Orders will usually be created through your storefront.