At a high level, standing up a B2C Commerce SFRA storefront means provisioning a site, attaching its cartridge stack, importing catalog and pricing data, and configuring search, content, and checkout. The exact steps run through Business Manager and your code repository. This is the shape of the work, not a click-by-click runbook.
- Provision the site and cartridge path
Create the storefront site in Business Manager, then set its cartridge path so the custom and SFRA overlay cartridges resolve on top of app_storefront_base. The order in the stack decides which code wins, so custom cartridges sit ahead of the base.
- Import catalog, pricing, and inventory
Load the product catalog, category structure, price books, and inventory lists the storefront will display. Pages render from this data, so nothing meaningful shows until the catalog and at least one price book are assigned to the site.
- Configure search, content, and SEO
Set up search refinements and sorting, build content slots or Page Designer pages for the homepage and landing areas, and define URL rules, meta data, and the sitemap so the catalog is findable.
- Wire up checkout and payments
Connect a payment processor, configure shipping methods and tax, and test the full cart-to-order path. Add optional features like Apple Pay through their overlay cartridges if the storefront needs them.
The ordered list of cartridges for the site. Custom overlays go before the SFRA base so your changes take precedence over app_storefront_base.
Which storefront catalog and price books the site uses. Without an assigned catalog and active price book, product and listing pages have nothing to show.
Where merchandisers place promotional content and landing layouts. Page Designer offers a visual canvas; content slots inject markup at defined positions.
The processors, shipping methods, and tax rules that drive checkout. These gate whether a shopper can actually complete an order.
- A wrong cartridge path order silently breaks customizations, because the base cartridge code runs instead of your overlay.
- Pages render empty when the catalog or price book is not assigned to the site, even though the storefront itself is live.
- Heavy custom CSS can break SFRA mobile responsiveness; test on real devices, not just a desktop browser resize.
- Skipping technical SEO at setup time is expensive to fix later, after URLs and structure are already indexed.