NetSuite Site Builder vs. SuiteCommerce Advanced

NetSuite Ecommerce

As you know NetSuite offers a complete front and back office solution with SuiteCommerce driving the online sales channel and the NetSuite ERP handling all back office related work. This gives NetSuite ecommerce a big edge over competing ecommerce systems because with NetSuite’s SuiteCommerce advanced platform, you get a fully integrated system complete with custom designed web stores and managed hosting that is perfectly in sync with back office operations like inventory and warehouse management, sales, customer support, marketing, etc.

At the moment NetSuite offers two flavors of its ecommerce platform – Site Builder which is its legacy ecommerce offering and SuiteCommerce Advanced, their current flagship ecommerce offering. Although Site Builder provides a tightly integrated, flexible platform for selling online for NetSuite users it is less feature rich when compared to SuiteCommerce Advanced, which provides tons of features and complete flexibility to extend the platform beyond its limits. In this post, we’ll go over the similarities and major differences between these two NetSuite ecommerce platforms. Hopefully by the end of this post, you’ll have a better sense of which platform is more suited to your ecommerce needs (if you’re already on the NetSuite platform).

Similarities between NetSuite Site Builder and SuiteCommerce Advanced

First, let’s look at the similarities between these two platforms. Here they are, in a nutshell.

1. Both offer a unified, cloud based ecommerce solution
2. Both offer support for multiple business models (B2C, B2B or even custom models)
3. Support for flexible customer payment options (including common payment gateways and invoicing based upon balance available and credit limits
4. Easy Integration with shipping carriers (UPS, FedEx, etc.)
5. Advanced pricing options including customer based pricing, payment terms and credit limits
6. Real time inventory management including online, per retail store and per warehouse
7. A 360 degree view of customers across retail, online and customer service points of contact
8. Support for advanced add-on modules like Checkout 2.0 and My Accounts that enhance the platform’s default customer experience
9. Support for global ecommerce operations with country specific language, tax and currency options
10. Support for multiple web stores integrated with the same NetSuite backend

Where SuiteCommerce Advanced has an edge over Site Builder

Apart from the features that both platforms have in common, SuiteCommerce Advanced offers quite a lot of options that give it an edge over Site Builder, such as:

• Pixel Perfect design control with full “can do anything” customization options
• Responsive web design for mobile and tablet optimized sites
• Advanced search – including fuzzy search and type ahead search options and rapid and relevant results
• Conversion best practices built in
• Improved browsing and product discoverability via facetted search
• Automatic up-sell and cross-sell recommendations with dynamic merchandizing
• Enhanced site speed (thanks to features like Single Page Application architecture and CDN Edge Caching)
• Use of modern web technologies

Why Choose SuiteCommerce Advanced over Site Builder

As you can see from the features mentioned above, SuiteCommerce Advanced a lot more bang for your buck, as compared to Site Builder and is the ideal solution if you’re facing any of the problems below.

• Your SuiteCommerce Advanced web store gets visitors from mobile devices but your site is not optimized for mobile
• Your current web store isn’t the best looking or easy to use, as compared to competitor storefronts
• You offer a large catalog of products on your web store but your visitors can’t always find the product(s) they are looking for
• You want to add customized features to your web store but can’t due to Site Builder’s limitations
• You want to add dynamic merchandising capabilities to your storefront but can’t since it’s not supported by Site Builder

Hope you found this post useful.  If you need more information or have a SuiteCommerce Advnaced project you would like to discuss, feel free to get in touch with us at [email protected]