How to set up a product-centric website in SharePoint Server 2013

In this series of "how to's" blog posts I'll describe how you can use SharePoint Server 2013 to set up a website that is based on product catalog data. I'll show you how to use the cross-site publishing feature, and how you can use SharePoint search features to influence how product data is displayed to visitors on a site. I'll use data from a fictitious company called "Contoso" to show how it all comes together. Contoso is a manufacturer and retailer of technology products and home appliances, and they want to set up a website that focuses on product-centric experiences.

To give you an idea of what we'll be doing, here's a couple of screenshots of what our Contoso website will look like once we're done.

Contoso webpages

IMPORTANT: The Contoso Electronics material that I'll use throughout this series isn't available for download.

Throughout the next weeks, I'll be publishing individual posts. The targeted publication dates are listed below. I'll add links to the posts as they go live.
Note: most of features described in this series are not available in SharePoint 2013 online.

Blog posts in this series:

 

You can read more about cross-site publishing on the TechNet scenario page Create SharePoint sites by using cross-site publishing.