eCommerce is the Odoo application for selling online: a web store that customers browse and buy from. What makes it distinctive is not the store itself but the fact that it is built into Odoo. This guide explains what the Odoo eCommerce application does.
An online store built into Odoo
Odoo eCommerce is an online shop, and it is part of Odoo Community. The important thing to understand from the start is that it is not a separate web store that has to be connected to the business system. It is part of the business system. The products in the shop are the products in Odoo. An order placed in the shop is an order in Odoo. There is no integration between the store and the back office, because the store is the front of the same system.
Building the store
Odoo eCommerce is built on the Odoo website capability, so the store is created and arranged using the same web-building tools as an Odoo website: a visual editor where pages are assembled from blocks. The product catalogue in the shop is drawn from the products in Odoo, presented for customers to browse. A business builds and adjusts its store visually, rather than needing a developer for routine changes.
The shopping and checkout flow
The customer's path through Odoo eCommerce is the familiar one. The customer browses the catalogue and selects a product, choosing a variant where the product has options. They add it to a cart, where they can review what they have chosen and apply a coupon code. They proceed to checkout, providing an address, choosing a delivery option, and paying. The order is then confirmed, the customer receives confirmation, and the delivery and invoice follow. Odoo eCommerce handles this whole flow as standard.
Connected to stock
One of the clearest benefits of the store being part of Odoo is the connection to inventory. The stock shown in the shop is the real stock in Odoo. When something sells online, stock is reduced, and the availability customers see can reflect what is genuinely in stock. A business does not have to keep an online catalogue's stock figures in step with a separate warehouse system by hand, because they are the same figures. This removes one of the most common and most frustrating problems of running an online store separately from the business: the store selling something that is not actually available.
Connected to orders, customers, and delivery
The connection continues through the whole order. An online order becomes a sales order in Odoo, so it flows into the same delivery, invoicing, and accounting as any other order. The customer has a portal where they can see their order history. Delivery options can be presented at checkout. Coupons and loyalty can apply. Everything that happens after "buy" runs through the one connected system rather than through a chain of integrations.
Who Odoo eCommerce suits
Odoo eCommerce suits a business that wants to sell online and run the rest of its operation on Odoo, because then the store is genuinely part of the business rather than another system to integrate and reconcile. It is especially compelling for a business that already runs Odoo and wants to add an online sales channel: the catalogue, the stock, and the order handling already exist, and the store is the web front placed on them. A business whose entire operation will live elsewhere, with Odoo doing nothing but the shop, gets less of this connected benefit and should weigh that.
The takeaway
The Odoo eCommerce application is an online store built into Odoo, where the shop's products, stock, and orders are the business's products, stock, and orders, not a separate system to integrate. It handles the full browse-to-checkout flow and connects to inventory, orders, customers, and delivery. Its strength is that the store is part of one connected business. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.