 Step 15Now we have reached the last tab for this tutorial which is
"Customer Accounts". This section deals with the link that customers will
use to create/login to their customer account.
The first item on the page is a checkbox that determines
whether the customer will see a link at the very top of the category tree or not. If
you choose not to display it, customers will still have access to creating, logging into,
and editing their accounts through the "Accounts" button on the top navigation
bar. But, it is definitely not as noticeable and will not be a visible reminder to
the customer as to whether they are logged in or not. We recommend displaying this
link.
The "Customer Login Link" will be what the link
will say before the customer creates an account or logs in. You may want to change
the Merchant default "Sign In" to something more meaningful like "Account
Login", "Customer Login", or anything else you like. You can leave it
as is, but it just does not sound very welcoming.
The "Customer Account Link" is the wording they
will see after they create an account or login. Merchant can greet the customer
using his first name, or both first and last name. Merchant defaults to greeting the
customer by his/her first and last name, with "Welcome back," and has a period
in the box that is provided for additional words/punctuation. So, theoretically, if
the customer's name were John Vader the link at the top of the category tree would change
from "Sign In" to "Welcome back, John Vader."
However, we
suggest you specify "NONE" because in reality, Merchant will use the
first and last name of the person in the "ship to"
field! This means that if John Vader sent a gift to his mother Ella Vader after
creating an account, the 'sign in' link will change to "Welcome back, Ella
Vader."!!!??? So, we believe it is far better for the customer to simply see
"Welcome back." than to be greeted with another person's name.
Another tip, that will make it easier for the customer to
use the "Sign In" link properly is to add more words in the
"punctuation" box. We will explain further, but first we should mention
that in order to edit information or logout, the customer will need to click on the
"Welcome back." link. As you can imagine, most customers will not
figure this out intuitively by reading the words "Welcome back."
So, we
suggest the following:
Keep the "Welcome back!" (we added an ! to it),
select the "none" radio button (for the name), then in the 'punctuation' box put
<BR>Click to edit/logout. This may look odd, but
if you try it without the <BR>, your category tree will
expand to accommodate the whole string of text and become quite wide.
The
customer sees this: |
 |
instead
of simply this: |
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The last item on the page is the
"Display Login Before Order Form" check box. If it is selected customers
will see a page prompting them to login to their account before checking out. It
will offer them the option of checking out "without an account", and a link to
create an account if they don't have one. We see no reason to deselect this option
unless you do not want to use customer accounts in your store at all. (You can do
this by replacing the "Accounts" button on the top navigation bar with a 1x1
pixel transparent GIF and de-selecting the "Display Link Above Categories" check
box and the "Display Login Before Order Form".)
Step 16
Finally, hit the "Update" button and you're done
editing your store! Well, for now anyway :o)
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