As the mission control of managing all things commerce, our Merchant Center has enabled brands to make exciting plans come true. Now, they can do even more! With a modern look and enhanced user experience, commercetools’ business tooling is evolving to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers.
Managing everyday tasks using an administration tool may not be headline-worthy, but it remains a crucial cog in the eCommerce machine. At commercetools, the Merchant Center is the engine managing the nuts and bolts of commerce, enabling users to create new promotions and handle discounts, as well as manage customer data and product information.
As the Merchant Center plays such a central role in commerce operations, it was high time to revamp our business tooling. As a first step, we redesigned it with a contemporary look and improved readability and user experience to make the jobs of thousands of commerce professionals easier, faster and more pleasing to the eye. In this article, check out what our redesigned Merchant Center looks like and the usability improvements we’ve made.
The Merchant Center gets a facelift: Here’s how the new design looks
The first noticeable change within the Merchant Center is the new look and feel. Reflecting modern design principles, we took a minimalist approach combined with the principle of visual hierarchy.
Before, users had to deal with a lot of information crammed into a page, making navigation difficult. Now, elements are arranged according to their order of importance and spaced in a visually appealing way. As a result, understanding the information on the screen and navigating each task is much easier.
Following essential best practices for readability and ease of use, we have accomplished a fresh and clean look that will enable users to get the job done faster and without distractions.
The structure and flow of information have also been optimized, so it’s easier to find the right information at the right time. With a streamlined UI, users can leverage efficient workflows in one place. Plus, onboarding new users is now faster with the recent introduction of guided tours. We'll continue to invest in making the onboarding process as convenient as possible with the future introduction of sample data to kick-off projects and role-based experiences.
In addition, using our updated Design System, available both internally and externally, it's now possible to create (or adjust) Custom Applications with a clean UI and modern look and feel. For that, we developed new Page Content Layout guidelines and components, so you can achieve a consistent UI/UX with the rest of the Merchant Center for your Custom Applications.
What’s up next?
Business users such as content, data quality and catalog managers are increasingly involved in technology decisions and commerce day-to-day operations. Users can (and should) handle vital commerce tasks without depending on the IT department with an intuitive and powerful tool like the Merchant Center.
Overall, we have a lot of improvements and upgrades lined up this year that you’ll be able to take advantage of. And while commercetools remains committed to API-first solutions, empowering business practitioners with no-code tools is equally important for companies to become faster and more agile in the world of commerce.
At commercetools, we're continually evolving our products to meet the shifting requirements of our customers, and the Merchant Center is no different. So, expect new waves of enhancements and innovations soon. Thanks to the flexibility and agility of our infrastructure, we’re not quite done yet — and that’s a great thing.
If you’re already a customer, log in now to experience the revamped Merchant Center. Are you new to commercetools? Get your 60-day free trial with the Merchant Center included and try it out.