The hosted shop
Commerce Orbit gives every organisation a ready shop with product, collection, cart, checkout and order pages, in your languages and currencies. When to use it, and when to sell on your own website instead.
Explanation5 min read
Every shop in Commerce Orbit has hosted pages, with nothing to build. They live at your shop address:
https://app.bifrostorbit.com/commerce/shop/northwildsThe last part is the shop address from Settings. Change it before you share links: old links stop working when it changes.
The pages
/commerce/shop/northwilds…/products/fjell-gtx-boot…/collections/tents…/cart…/checkout…/orders/NW1042…/account…/account/orders…/account/addresses…/account/profile| Page | Address | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Shop | /commerce/shop/northwilds | Your active collections that have products, then every active product. |
| Product | …/products/fjell-gtx-boot | Photos, price, compare-at price, a choice of options such as size, whether it is in stock, the description and specifications, Add to cart and the express checkout buttons. |
| Collection | …/collections/tents | The collection's text and its active products in the order you chose. |
| Cart | …/cart | What's in the cart, a discount code field, the total and the express checkout buttons. |
| Checkout | …/checkout | Email, name, delivery or collection, VAT number, payment. |
| Order | …/orders/NW1042 | The order, its status and tracking, and the receipt or invoice to download. |
| Your account | …/account | Sign in with an emailed code. Signed in: the customer's company, MAM account and its status, their branch, recent orders, and a form to ask for an account to be linked. |
| Orders | …/account/orders | Every order with its status, tracking, receipt or invoice, and Order again. |
| Addresses | …/account/addresses | The customer's address book, with their default delivery and billing addresses. |
| Your details | …/account/profile | Name, phone, marketing emails, and a way to ask for the account to be deleted. |
The pages carry your shop name, logo and colour from Settings. The foot of each page shows your seller details, contact email, terms and how many days customers have to return goods.
Product and collection pages are made for search engines, with your SEO title and description. Cart, checkout and order pages aren't indexed.
How fast changes show
For shoppers who aren't signed in and have nothing in their cart, the shop, collection and product pages are kept for up to a minute, so the shop stays fast when many people visit at once. Changing a product, its stock, a collection or your shop settings clears the kept pages within a few seconds, so shoppers see the change on their next visit. Anything else, such as pausing the shop, shows within a minute.
Signed-in customers and shoppers with a cart always get their own page, made for them, so a trade customer's prices and branch stock are never shown to anyone else.
Checkout
The shopper fills in their email, name and phone, chooses how to get the order (a delivery rate for their country or collection in store), adds the delivery address and, if they buy for a business, a VAT number, which is checked with the EU straight away. A billing address can differ from the delivery address. Signed-in customers pick from their saved addresses, and their default address is filled in for them. Deliveries to the US also ask for the state. The total updates as they go, with shipping and VAT. They then pay with Stripe's payment form, showing the payment methods your Stripe account offers. Buyers from a company with invoice terms can choose to pay by invoice instead. See Invoices and receipts.
Customers who aren't signed in can sign in from checkout, without losing the cart. A signed-in trade customer sees their account's prices on every page, with stock at their branch, and a box in the cart and checkout naming the account. See Customers and companies.
With express checkout, shoppers can skip the form and pay with Apple Pay, Google Pay or Link from the product page or the cart. See Connect your Stripe account.
After paying, the shopper lands on their order page. Their stock is set aside from the moment they start paying, for the time under Hold stock for in Shop settings, 15 minutes unless you change it. If they don't finish in time, the order is cancelled and the stock comes back.
The order page
The confirmation email links to the customer's order page. It needs the order number and the email address the order was placed with, so nobody else can open it. It shows the lines, totals and VAT, whether it is paid, sent or cancelled, every parcel's tracking, and a download of the receipt or invoice once paid.
Languages and currencies
Shoppers can switch to any language and currency you sell in. Product and collection text shows in their language where you have translated it, and the shop's own words, such as Add to cart, come in English, Norwegian and German; other languages use English for them. Prices show in the chosen currency, using the prices you set for it. See Languages and currencies.
Carts
A cart is remembered in the shopper's browser for that shop. If a shopper who typed their email leaves without ordering, Commerce Orbit sends Left in the cart reminders with a link straight back to the same cart, an hour later unless you add more steps under Cart reminders. Switch them off in Settings. See Emails to customers.
Hosted shop or your own website
| Use the hosted shop when | Use your own website when |
|---|---|
| You want to sell today with nothing to build | You want the shop inside your brand's website, with your own design |
| Your website only needs to link to products, such as "Buy the Tind 2 tent" | You want products on your own pages, next to your own content |
| You run a small range or a campaign | You have developers, or build your website in CMS Orbit |
You can mix them. A website in CMS Orbit can show products with blocks, with Add to cart buttons that send shoppers to the hosted cart and checkout. See Show your products on your website. Developers can build the whole shop on your own website with the storefront API: see The storefront API.
Not there yet
The hosted shop doesn't have search, filters or its own domain yet. It always lives under app.bifrostorbit.com/commerce/shop/.
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