Optimizely Commerce
Why Commerce matters
Section titled “Why Commerce matters”Selling products online requires more than a payment form. You need a product catalog that marketers can manage, a cart that handles pricing rules and promotions, a checkout flow that integrates with payment and shipping providers, and content that makes products compelling. Most organizations end up stitching together separate systems for content and commerce, which creates data silos, inconsistent experiences, and integration headaches.
Optimizely Commerce solves this by embedding commerce capabilities directly into the Optimizely One platform. Products, categories, pricing, inventory, carts, and orders all live alongside your CMS content, experimentation data, and customer profiles. This means a single platform handles both the story you tell about a product and the transaction that follows.
Two editions: Configured vs Customized
Section titled “Two editions: Configured vs Customized”Optimizely offers Commerce in two editions, each designed for a different level of control.
| Commerce Configured | Commerce Customized | |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Pre-built storefront with configuration options | Full .NET framework for building custom commerce |
| Best for | Teams that want fast time-to-market with standard flows | Teams that need unique checkout logic, custom integrations, or complex pricing |
| Catalog management | Built-in UI with structured product types | Fully extensible catalog model with custom properties |
| Checkout | Configurable multi-step checkout | Developer-built checkout with full control |
| CMS integration | Content blocks for product display | Deep integration with CMS content model |
| Customization | Configuration and theming | Unlimited code-level customization |
How to choose: Start with Configured if your commerce needs are standard (catalog, cart, checkout, promotions). Move to Customized when you need behaviors that configuration alone cannot achieve — complex B2B pricing, multi-warehouse fulfillment, or custom order workflows.
Core commerce concepts
Section titled “Core commerce concepts”Product catalog
Section titled “Product catalog”The catalog is the foundation of Commerce. It organizes your sellable items into a hierarchy:
- Catalogs — Top-level containers (e.g., “Spring 2026 Collection”)
- Categories — Organizational nodes within a catalog (e.g., “Footwear”, “Accessories”)
- Products — The items you sell, which contain one or more variants
- Variants — The specific SKUs a customer adds to cart (e.g., “Blue, Size 10”)
Each level can carry metadata — descriptions, images, custom properties — that drives both the shopping experience and internal operations.
Pricing and inventory
Section titled “Pricing and inventory”Commerce separates pricing from the product definition. A single variant can have multiple prices based on:
- Currency — USD, EUR, GBP
- Customer group — Wholesale, VIP, standard
- Quantity — Tiered pricing for bulk orders
- Date range — Sale pricing with automatic start and end
Inventory tracks stock levels per warehouse and variant. When stock reaches zero, Commerce can hide the variant, show a backorder option, or trigger a notification — depending on your configuration.
Cart and checkout
Section titled “Cart and checkout”The cart is a server-side object that persists across sessions. It handles line items, promotions, shipping calculations, and tax. The checkout flow moves the cart through validation, payment authorization, and order creation.
Commerce Customized gives you full control over each checkout step. Commerce Configured provides a pre-built flow that you customize through configuration rather than code.
Order management
Section titled “Order management”After checkout, the cart becomes an order. Orders track fulfillment status, payment captures, returns, and refunds. Commerce provides APIs for integrating with external fulfillment systems, ERP platforms, and customer service tools.
How Commerce connects to the rest of Optimizely One
Section titled “How Commerce connects to the rest of Optimizely One”Commerce does not operate in isolation. Its value multiplies when connected to other Optimizely products.
Commerce + CMS
Section titled “Commerce + CMS”CMS provides the content layer for your storefront. Product pages, landing pages, and campaign pages are CMS content that references catalog data. This means content authors can build rich product experiences using the same editor they use for the rest of the site.
Commerce + ODP
Section titled “Commerce + ODP”Optimizely Data Platform (ODP) unifies customer data across channels. When Commerce sends purchase events to ODP, you get a complete view of each customer — browsing behavior, purchase history, email engagement, and support interactions. This powers:
- Segmentation based on purchase behavior (high-value customers, repeat buyers, cart abandoners)
- Predictive analytics that forecast lifetime value and churn risk
- Cross-channel consistency so email, web, and in-store experiences align
Commerce + Recommendations
Section titled “Commerce + Recommendations”The Recommendations engine uses purchase and browsing data to suggest products. When Commerce and Recommendations are connected, you can show “customers also bought”, “frequently bought together”, and personalized product suggestions without manual merchandising.
Commerce + Experimentation
Section titled “Commerce + Experimentation”Run A/B tests on product pages, checkout flows, pricing displays, and promotion strategies. Because Commerce and Experimentation share the same platform, you can measure the revenue impact of every change — not just clicks and conversions.
Technical architecture
Section titled “Technical architecture”Commerce runs as part of your Optimizely application. On Commerce Customized, it is a set of .NET packages that integrate into your CMS PaaS project. The catalog, pricing, inventory, cart, and order subsystems each have their own APIs and data stores, but share a common identity and event model.
Key architectural characteristics:
- Server-side — Cart and order logic runs on the server, ensuring pricing integrity and security
- Event-driven — Commerce publishes events (cart updated, order placed, payment captured) that other systems can subscribe to
- Extensible — Custom pricing calculators, tax providers, payment gateways, and shipping integrators plug into well-defined extension points
- API-first — All operations are available through APIs for headless and hybrid architectures
When Commerce is not the right fit
Section titled “When Commerce is not the right fit”Commerce is designed for organizations that want content and commerce on a single platform. If your commerce needs are simple (a few products, no complex pricing), a lighter solution may be more appropriate. If you already have a mature commerce platform and only need Optimizely for content, consider integrating at the content layer rather than replacing your commerce system.