Existing Functionality to be Preserved Until at Least 2022

A brief history of promotions in NetSuite:

1. Standard Promotions were the only option at first, allowing basic promotions to be created and offered in Site Builder or phone orders like a % off coupon code. This functionality is pretty basic.
2. In 2014, NetSuite released a SuiteBundle (a free package that users could install in their account) to support more types of promotions - line level promos allowing a single item to ship free, order based criteria, and things like Buy X, get Y free. This new functionality was welcomed and supported Site Builder.
3. Around 2017, NetSuite began offering a new feature called SuitePromotions (https://developers.suitecommerce.com/section4737596252), with lots of new functionality:
   • Stackable Promotions
   • Auto-Apply Promotions
   • Best Offer
   • Cached Saved Searches
   • Audit and Visibility
   • Automatically Add Free Gift to the Transaction

The new feature is not compatible with the previous promotions - You can have both active in your system, but could only apply either a SuitePromotion or one of the others to an order, not both. The other major downside is that SuitePromotions can't be used on Site Builder, where the vast majority of NetSuite companies host their sites.

1. In November 2019, NetSuite announced that they will be removing standard and advanced promotions completely.

Before we get into more detail, you should probably be asking yourself why you would even care about microdata as a business owner, the answer is - Rich Snippets & Google Shopping.

By adding hidden microdata tags to your pages, products and other entities of your site, you make them more attractive to the user in Google search. For example, a regular search snippet looks like this:

Responsive design in a nutshell is when your site automatically fits within the user’s device. Thus, if the user has a small screen (width-wise), the elements will rearrange to show you what really matters (CTA buttons, other actionable items). You’ll often see bigger buttons, more blank space between the various web elements in hopes to avoid accidental user actions, smaller font-sizes, etc.

In June, Apple introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention (https://marketingland.com/wwdc-safari-will-block-third-party-trackers-following-users-around-web-216734), a major change to the way Safari handles third party cookies, which is the main way advertising companies gather data about users. The main goal is to limit the ability of large data mining companies to build extensive web history for all users using hidden tags that they don't even know about. ITP mostly targets pervasive retargeting practices rather than disrupting advertisers’ ability to track ad campaign performance. In my opinion, this is a good thing for users, although it also reinforces the near monopoly of online ad market share for Google and Facebook. Due to the change, there are specific consequences for NetSuite websites.

I have been working with NetSuite since 2004, with much of my time spent on building and optimizing websites in their site builder platform (Now called SuiteCommerce Site Builder). In those 11 years, almost nothing has changed, and none of the many bugs I have personally submitted have ever been addressed. From what I can tell, at least 90% of NetSuite companies that have a website are running on site builder, which costs around $12k per year. The only other platform NetSuite offers is the new SuiteCommerce Advanced, which is 3 times as much and requires a great deal of highly complex code to be written in order to actually launch a website. Since most NetSuite companies can't afford a six-figure website, I have put together this list of bugs and shortcomings that I have come across, specifically about the web site categories (this post would be a book if I tried to list all of the site builder related issues I've found). Hopefully it will spare you some of the frustration I have had in discovering these the hard way. I have tried submitting bugs for most of these, but NetSuite support mostly tells me they are 'enhancement requests', which have never been addressed.