Article Overview
This article is meant to be a quick starting point for understanding the most important aspects of websites creation and customization on the CIMcloud platform.
Article Sections:
- Website Basics
- Customizing Websites
- Highlighted Ecommerce Features
Website Basics
The CIMcloud website platform is designed for native B2B and B2C SaaS Ecommerce where you can run multiple customer-facing Web Stores and/or Portals (called Customer Sites) from a single, ERP-integrated backend. Each Customer Site is configured as B2B or B2C with options for Public or Login-Restricted access and product pricing visibility. You can also use your own domain names for sites.
Each Customer Site has native functionality for:
- Ecommerce – Product Catalog, Accounts, Contacts, Quotes, Orders, Shipments, Invoices, Payments, Returns, and more.
- Content Management – Content Pages, Media, and Navigation. Design responsive content pages with the no-code, drag and drop visual editor.
- Extensive Customization – No-Code, Low-Code, Yes-Code options for customization
There is also a Worker Portal site where your employees will go to operate the platform.
Additional Information:
- Customer Sites Overview
- Customer-Specific Web Stores
- Worker Portal Overview
- CIMcloud Platform Overview
Customizing Websites
The website platform has a multi-layered settings structure, offering extensive control over functionality and appearance through both standard (No-Code) and custom-code options.
No-Code Customization
Features & Settings as well as Data Rights are managed via comprehensive No-Code configuration layers with granular overrides available at each layer. These settings have been designed to accommodate most Ecommerce scenarios for both flexibility and easier long-term site maintenance.
| Features & Settings
How does the site function and look? |
Data Rights
What records are accessible? |
|
| Customer-Facing Layers | ||
| • Application – Defaults for all sites and contacts | Extensive options | Products, Categories, Warehouses, Navigation |
| • Customer Sites – Specific web stores | Inherit or Override | Products, Categories, Warehouses, Navigation |
| • Customer Groups – Collections of accounts/contacts | Inherit or Override | Products, Categories, Warehouses, Navigation |
| • Accounts – Companies (via Groups) | Inherit or Override | Products, Categories, Warehouses, Navigation |
| • Contacts – Single account users (via Groups) | Inherit or Override | Products, Categories, Warehouses, Navigation |
| Worker-Facing Layers | ||
| • Workspace – Defaults for worker portal | Extensive options | n/a |
| • Workers – Users with Worker Portal access | Inherit or Override | Accounts (via Customer Account Filters) |
Think of Features & Settings as the options that control the functionality and appearance of sites whereas Data Rights control which data is available to the site/user. These are powerful tools to create a personalized experience for customers.
There are too many settings to list them in this article but you will find them referenced throughout the Help Center.
Additional Information:
Low-Code and Yes-Code Customization
For highly specialized requirements, there are powerful Low-Code and Yes-Code capabilities, to override standard functionality at various layers.
Front-end appearance and functionality can be changed with custom CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. Customizations follow an “override” strategy instead of a “fork and edit” strategy to simplify how platform and template version updates are received from CIMcloud. Front-end web development knowledge is required to create and maintain the custom code.
| CSS | JavaScript | HTML | |
| Customer-Facing Layers | |||
| • Application – Defaults for all sites and contacts | Override stylesheets with custom CSS rules | Add JS to page headers and footers. CIMcloud JS APIs available. | Override HTML templates |
| • Customer Sites – Specific web stores | Override stylesheets with custom CSS rules | Add JS to page headers and footers. CIMcloud JS APIs available. | Override HTML templates |
| Worker-Facing Layers | |||
| • Workspace – Defaults for worker portal | Override stylesheets with custom CSS rules | Add JS to page headers and footers. CIMcloud JS APIs available. | Override HTML templates |
Note: pages that process security credentials or credit card holder data subject to PCI DSS cannot have custom code applied.
In circumstances where custom CSS, JS, or HTML is not sufficient, the core platform can be extended with server hooks with the assistance of a Partner or CIMcloud.
Additional Information:
Highlighted Ecommerce Features
These are some of CIMcloud’s Ecommerce capabilities often asked about by website creators.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The platform includes tools for managing SEO settings, automatic structured data (JSON-LD), URLs, meta data, and sitemaps for control over how their site is discovered and indexed by search engines:
Automation
There are multiple integration methods for marketing automation and advanced scenarios. The platform also has native email automation for customer communications like abandoned cart and back-in-stock alerts, as well as a REST API for more advanced, code-based integrations.
- Marketing Automation via make.com (Low-Code)
- Abandoned carts emails
- Inventory levels emails
- REST API for more advanced scenarios (Yes-Code)
Analytics & Reporting
No-Code integrations with common user tracking platforms like Google Analytics, Facebook, Google Ads, and Microsoft UET are built into the platform.
Promotions, Coupons & Pricing Flexibility
The platform has a robust pricing engine that can handle complex B2B pricing scenarios including customer-specific pricing, group-specific pricing, warehouse-specific pricing, tiered pricing, and quantity discounts. Best practice is to sync your ERP pricing rules directly into CIMcloud. There are also many No-Code pricing options to establish incentives and drive more sales.
- Coupon Manager – Setup promo codes for discounts or offers, including targeting specific customers, customer groups, and products categories.
- Promotions (Buy X, Get Y Deals) – Rewards can be free products or discounts.
- Gift Certificates / Loyalty Incentives – Customers can purchase or earn digital gift cards
- Featured Products
- Price Visibility