Introduction
The objective of this blog is to provide an overview about SmartEdit capabilities, including best practices, as well as key benefits. The focus is more business-oriented than technical.
This blog is for you if you work on eCommerce content, marketing, or merchandise, or if you manage web content in order to keep it up to date and relevant for your customers. For simplicity, we will refer to all of those roles by the term content manager.
SmartEdit - main capabilities & best practices
SmartEdit is the native CMS (Content Management System) of SAP Commerce Cloud. It enables content managers to create and manage content for your web shop. Content managers can easily edit images, text, and other content of a web shop page using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor without in-depth technical knowledge.
Technically spoken, SmartEdit is a UI for managing web shop pages and is based on a Java-Script framework. Both are natively integrated to SAP Commerce accelerator and composable storefront pages.
Let’s have a closer look what’s covered with SmartEdit:
Content management on a local and global level
With SmartEdit, you can create and edit multiple websites (including content versioning and locales) across multiple brands. Content can be shared across sites in order to support multiple regions, brands, or lines of business. For example, content managers can reuse components and pages from a top-level parent catalog to lower-level country, regional, and local content catalogs.
Just like in PCM (Product Content Management), CMS via SmartEdit organizes content into catalogs. PCM product catalogs are used to manage product content (such as article numbers, descriptions, prices, and catalog-aware imagery such as product images), whereas in SmartEdit content catalogs are used to manage web shop content (such as text and media that are not tied to products).
Management of pages and navigation
A page list displays all the pages in a catalog version. The content manager can create new pages based on existing page templates, or clone an existing page.
In SmartEdit, you can also define your top and bottom nagivation menus, which will be common to most if not all pages on your site. It is best practice to link your most important product categories in your top navigation, and to any important non-product pages in your top and/or bottom navigation.
Since SAP Commerce Cloud release 2211, content managers can navigate and manage the contents of a page using a newly introduced tree view for components. This provides a helpful overview, and lets you navigate content-heavy pages more easily.
Page editing with different views
On the SmartEdit Homepage, the content manager has different modes offered.
In general, it is best practice to tailor the above described views based on your content manager’s activities and needs. For example, the basic editing rights are offered to occasional users that only change parts of a page or that build simple pages. Whereas the advanced editing rights are assigned to key users that are working with the tool on a regular basis.
Components and slots
Component types are the different forms of content used to enrich the web shop pages (e.g. banner, product carousel, paragraph, etc.) These can be added to the page via drag & drop and it is visualized in green or red if the page template allows the component to be placed at the desired location (content slot) or not. You can also add existing (and previously saved components) from here.
One important benefit using SmartEdit is that many standard component types will show data from related Commerce Cloud areas. For example, product references and product carousel components will show product data from PCM. See the section Benefits for more details.
New component types can be created based on existing ones, though that will require some level of development effort. It is best practice to collect the content manger’s requirements regarding component types (e.g. newsfeed, article preview, etc.) as early as possible in a Commerce Cloud implementation project, so that these elements are “componentized” and can be easily edited later. Planning ahead will give you greater power to create, edit, and personalize content without having to involve your technical team.
Personalization
Content managers have two options to achieve personalization based on what fits best their needs.
Option 1: Add restrictions to components by selecting the component and choosing the desired restriction such as time restriction, user group restriction, category restriction and many more. For example, in the case of time restrictions, temporary content for sales, seasonal offerings, and so on can be created. If further restrictions in addition to the standard ones are needed, this requires configuration or development work.
Option 2: On the SmartEdit Site overview, choose Homepage, Personalization mode and Library to add a customization rule that applies to a specific target group. Subsequently, the target group is further refined by adding one or more segments. These segments can theoretically be created manually in the Commerce Backoffice. However it is best practice to integrate segments e.g. from Emarsys, SAP Customer Data Platform or third party solutions which requires some development effort.
In order to replace the standard with personalized content for the target group, the content manager selects Customize and chooses the target group for which the content should be personalized. Using the Combined View, the content manager gets a preview of the personalized content per target group.
As soon as the user triggers a segment or restriction, or a combination of thereof, the personalized content is shown to the user. This could replace a single standard banner with a personalized one, or it could replace an entire page with a personalized one. Personalization could be small and targeted, or an entirely different experience can be offered to different customer groups.
Collaboration workflows and content manager roles
SmartEdit uses the built-in workflow capabilities of SAP Commerce Cloud, and enables content managers to manage team collaboration by orchestrating content preparation and related activities more efficiently.
Employees can manage the content based on the roles and permissions assigned to them. Predefined user roles include cmsmanager, cmseditor, cmsreviewer, cmspublisher, cmstranslator. You should begin by looking at these default roles, and then changing the permissions at a granular level, based on your own requirements.
For more details of the described capabilities in the above section, have a look at the SmartEdit landing page in Help.com.
Benefits
One important reason to go with SmartEdit is the advantage that it’s a part of SAP Commerce Cloud. Therefore, you can take advantage of prebuilt capabilities into other SAP Commerce Cloud business tools which enable seamless processes and reduce integration efforts. Even beyond that, however, there are some key reasons to consider using it.
Some examples of seamless integration & business scenarios:
To summarize this Benefits section, you can achieve the following with SmartEdit:
Summary
We have covered the main capabilities, best practices and benefits of SmartEdit as native Content Management tool. Thank you for reading. As this is my first blog, I especially appreciate your feedback or comments.
The objective of this blog is to provide an overview about SmartEdit capabilities, including best practices, as well as key benefits. The focus is more business-oriented than technical.
This blog is for you if you work on eCommerce content, marketing, or merchandise, or if you manage web content in order to keep it up to date and relevant for your customers. For simplicity, we will refer to all of those roles by the term content manager.
SmartEdit - main capabilities & best practices
SmartEdit is the native CMS (Content Management System) of SAP Commerce Cloud. It enables content managers to create and manage content for your web shop. Content managers can easily edit images, text, and other content of a web shop page using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor without in-depth technical knowledge.
Technically spoken, SmartEdit is a UI for managing web shop pages and is based on a Java-Script framework. Both are natively integrated to SAP Commerce accelerator and composable storefront pages.
Let’s have a closer look what’s covered with SmartEdit:
Content management on a local and global level
With SmartEdit, you can create and edit multiple websites (including content versioning and locales) across multiple brands. Content can be shared across sites in order to support multiple regions, brands, or lines of business. For example, content managers can reuse components and pages from a top-level parent catalog to lower-level country, regional, and local content catalogs.
Just like in PCM (Product Content Management), CMS via SmartEdit organizes content into catalogs. PCM product catalogs are used to manage product content (such as article numbers, descriptions, prices, and catalog-aware imagery such as product images), whereas in SmartEdit content catalogs are used to manage web shop content (such as text and media that are not tied to products).
Site with Content Catalogs
Management of pages and navigation
A page list displays all the pages in a catalog version. The content manager can create new pages based on existing page templates, or clone an existing page.
In SmartEdit, you can also define your top and bottom nagivation menus, which will be common to most if not all pages on your site. It is best practice to link your most important product categories in your top navigation, and to any important non-product pages in your top and/or bottom navigation.
Since SAP Commerce Cloud release 2211, content managers can navigate and manage the contents of a page using a newly introduced tree view for components. This provides a helpful overview, and lets you navigate content-heavy pages more easily.
Page Structure Tree View
Page editing with different views
On the SmartEdit Homepage, the content manager has different modes offered.
- Preview: To view pages how they appear to a customer without any personalization. This includes a preview for different screen sizes such as desktop, mobile or tablet.
- Basic Edit: To edit existing and add new components (e.g. banners, product carousels, etc.) via drag-and-drop.
- Advanced Edit: To edit all components, including the navigation. This mode includes enhanced editing based on the content manager’s assigned permissions.
- Personalization: To view the page from a customer’s perspective based on the previously defined personalization rules.
- Versioning: To create and manage page versions, as well as preview the different versions of the page.
In general, it is best practice to tailor the above described views based on your content manager’s activities and needs. For example, the basic editing rights are offered to occasional users that only change parts of a page or that build simple pages. Whereas the advanced editing rights are assigned to key users that are working with the tool on a regular basis.
Components and slots
Component types are the different forms of content used to enrich the web shop pages (e.g. banner, product carousel, paragraph, etc.) These can be added to the page via drag & drop and it is visualized in green or red if the page template allows the component to be placed at the desired location (content slot) or not. You can also add existing (and previously saved components) from here.
One important benefit using SmartEdit is that many standard component types will show data from related Commerce Cloud areas. For example, product references and product carousel components will show product data from PCM. See the section Benefits for more details.
New component types can be created based on existing ones, though that will require some level of development effort. It is best practice to collect the content manger’s requirements regarding component types (e.g. newsfeed, article preview, etc.) as early as possible in a Commerce Cloud implementation project, so that these elements are “componentized” and can be easily edited later. Planning ahead will give you greater power to create, edit, and personalize content without having to involve your technical team.
Add Component Types or Saved Components
Personalization
Content managers have two options to achieve personalization based on what fits best their needs.
Option 1: Add restrictions to components by selecting the component and choosing the desired restriction such as time restriction, user group restriction, category restriction and many more. For example, in the case of time restrictions, temporary content for sales, seasonal offerings, and so on can be created. If further restrictions in addition to the standard ones are needed, this requires configuration or development work.
Option 2: On the SmartEdit Site overview, choose Homepage, Personalization mode and Library to add a customization rule that applies to a specific target group. Subsequently, the target group is further refined by adding one or more segments. These segments can theoretically be created manually in the Commerce Backoffice. However it is best practice to integrate segments e.g. from Emarsys, SAP Customer Data Platform or third party solutions which requires some development effort.
In order to replace the standard with personalized content for the target group, the content manager selects Customize and chooses the target group for which the content should be personalized. Using the Combined View, the content manager gets a preview of the personalized content per target group.
As soon as the user triggers a segment or restriction, or a combination of thereof, the personalized content is shown to the user. This could replace a single standard banner with a personalized one, or it could replace an entire page with a personalized one. Personalization could be small and targeted, or an entirely different experience can be offered to different customer groups.
Combined View: Preview of Personalized Content per Target Group
Collaboration workflows and content manager roles
SmartEdit uses the built-in workflow capabilities of SAP Commerce Cloud, and enables content managers to manage team collaboration by orchestrating content preparation and related activities more efficiently.
Employees can manage the content based on the roles and permissions assigned to them. Predefined user roles include cmsmanager, cmseditor, cmsreviewer, cmspublisher, cmstranslator. You should begin by looking at these default roles, and then changing the permissions at a granular level, based on your own requirements.
For more details of the described capabilities in the above section, have a look at the SmartEdit landing page in Help.com.
Benefits
One important reason to go with SmartEdit is the advantage that it’s a part of SAP Commerce Cloud. Therefore, you can take advantage of prebuilt capabilities into other SAP Commerce Cloud business tools which enable seamless processes and reduce integration efforts. Even beyond that, however, there are some key reasons to consider using it.
Some examples of seamless integration & business scenarios:
- Frontend integration: SmartEdit works out-of-the box with Composable Storefront (aka Spartacus), same as with the Accelerator frontend, which is deprecated in the meantime.
- Search: Search profiles that were previously set-up in the Adaptive Search Cockpit can be assigned to target groups in SmartEdit. As a result, the customers belonging to the target group will view a personalized search configuration. For example, fans of a certain brand see the brand related products first, as a result of boosting them in the search profile.
- Promotions: Much as described for search profiles above, a Commerce promotion (e.g. 10% discount) can be assigned to a particular target group. All customers belonging to the target group will see the promotion. Note that the promotion needs to be set-up in the Commerce Backoffice previously.
- Standard component types: A variety of out-of-the-box component types such as product references and product carousels are integrated with PCM (Product Content Management) and directly show the up-to-date product data.
- Other component types include product recommendations from Intelligent Selling Solutions (ISS) or Emarsys and are added with just a few clicks.
- You can expect that further integration scenarios will be available in the future.
To summarize this Benefits section, you can achieve the following with SmartEdit:
- Build engaging sites with an intuitive interface including drag-and-drop.
- Navigate, preview, interact and edit in-context content to create relevant and personalized journeys.
- Work across sites to manage content on a global level with multiple lines of business. Share content across sites to ensure quick time to market and brand consistency.
Summary
We have covered the main capabilities, best practices and benefits of SmartEdit as native Content Management tool. Thank you for reading. As this is my first blog, I especially appreciate your feedback or comments.
- SAP Managed Tags:
2 Comments
