Preview allows you to ensure content changes made in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator display in your store as expected. You can use preview in both a production and staging environment. For example, your marketing team decides to promote a line of leather coats. You create an e-Marketing Spot for the new coats in the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator. Using preview, you can ensure the e-Marketing Spot displays the leather coats promotion in your store as you expect, with the correct fonts, images and text. The following options are available when previewing your site. An explanation for each option follows:
- Choose the first page displayed in the preview.
- View your online store at a virtual date and time.
- Set Product Recommendation inventory results to true or false while you preview.
- View your online store as a specific user.
Choose the first page displayed in the preview
You can choose which store page first loads when you launch preview. By default, the home page URL of the store that you are working with in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator is entered in the store preview options page as shown in the following image:
You can change this by specifying the URL of the first page you want to see. For example, if your changed content is the image that displays on a product display page, you can enter the URL for the store's product display page as a preview option. The page that displays when you launch the preview is this URL.
View your store on a virtual date and time
You can set the date and time that is reflected in your online store preview. This option helps you ensure that time-sensitive content, such as a promotion, displays only when expected. For example, a one-day promotion should display only between the hours of midnight and 11:59 pm. You can use preview to ensure the promotion does not display outside of these times and does display between these times. You can also choose to use your current system time. The current system time is the default setting.
Choose whether or not time elapses in the preview
- Time in the preview does not change as real time elapses
- The preview begins at the date and time you specify, and elapses. For example, if your preview begins on July 3, 2006 at 1:30 p.m., and five minutes elapses, the time reflected in the preview is 1:35 p.m.
- Time in the preview elapses as real time elapses
- The preview begins at the date and time you specify and does not elapse. For example, if your preview begins on July 3, 2006 at 1:30 p.m., and five minutes elapses, the time reflected in the preview remains at 1:30 p.m.
Set Product Recommendation inventory results to true or false while you preview
Web activities can recommend products based on the number of units in the database. For example, you may want to promote a product because there are too many units in inventory and the products are taking up too much space in your warehouse. You can create a Web activity that displays only if you have over a certain number of units in your inventory.
To help with testing your product recommendations within preview, you can set options to dictate how preview treats these inventory rules. The following product recommendation inventory rules settings are available:
- Use inventory levels in the database
- This option uses the data stored in your server's database. For example, a promotion should display only when the number of items in inventory is greater than 1000. This constraint evaluates to true if the number of items in your database is greater than 1000 and will evaluate to false if the number of items in your database is less than 1000.
- Set all inventory filter results to true
- All inventory constraints are set to true. For example, if a product recommendation Web activity should display only when the number of items in inventory is greater than 1000, this constraint evaluates to true, even if the number of items in your actual inventory is less than 1000.
- Set all inventory filter results to false
- All inventory constraints are set to false. For example, if a product recommendation Web activity should display only when the number of items in inventory is greater than 1000, this constraint evaluates to false, even if the number of items in your actual inventory is greater than 1000.
View your store as a specific user
After you specify the preview options above, you can preview your store. When previewing your store, initially you are a guest user. You can log onto your store as a specific user and view what the store looks like to that specific user. This can be useful, for example, to test marketing campaigns targeted at specific customers, such as females over 40 years of age. You can ensure that the campaign displays to these customers only.
Within preview, you can create a new registered user by following your store's registration process. This user will still exist in your database after you close the preview. For more information see Operational and transactional data.
Operational and transactional data
While previewing your site, you can perform actions that modify operational and transactional data, for example, registering new users, placing orders, and using coupons. When operational and transactional data is modified, the information is recorded in the database, in the same way it is recorded when a real user performs these actions. For example, new users will still exist in the database after you exit from preview, and you can login as these users in the store inside or outside of a preview session. Another example is if you redeem coupons within preview, the redemption counts towards any defined redemption limit. If you collect analytical information from this data, be aware that your actions during preview may affect your analytics.
You can disable commands from running within preview. For more information see Commands and view restrictions in preview.