You can see your customers in your Control Panel → My sales → Customers page. Here is what this page looks like:
When customers place an order or create an account in your store by clicking the "Sing in" link, they appear on this list.
You can manage your customers in the following ways:
- Add customers to customer groups.
This allows you to give them discounts. How to create customer groups - Mark customers as tax exempt.
If you charge taxes in your store, you can mark some customers as tax exempt, please see the instructions in this article. - See all orders placed by a specific customer.
To do it, simply click on the number in the "Order count" column. To get more statistics about your store, check out the "Reports" page in your Control Panel > My Sales > Reports
How customers can use their accounts
In their accounts in your store the customers can:
- See all their orders with current payment and fulfilment statuses.
- Save shipping addresses to the Address Book.
This feature is especially good for repeat customers. After they save the address to the address book, they can simply select it on checkout instead of entering it manually. It will make the checkout process easier for them. - Specify VAT ID.
If a customer enters their VAT ID, it will auto-fill on checkout.
How to add customers to the store
Sometimes when you start a store you may already have a list of customers or you may want to add new customers in bulk to your existing store. You can import them to store with the help of the "Import customers" app. Contact your online store provider, if you don't have access to this feature yet.
The process is simple: upload a CSV file with customers via this app. This CSV file must have comma (",") as a delimiter and it must start with a header ("name","email","password"). You can import customer’s name, email address, and password (optional).
How customers can log into the account
Previously, we used the traditional way for customers to create an account or log in to it. Customers needed to enter a login and a password. Now we’ve come up with a new up-to-date method for login using a link.
Here is how it works: customers click the "Sign in" link, enter their email address and get the link for signing in to their inbox. When they click the link, they are taken back to the storefront and they are logged in. Here is the form the customer will see:
Logging in by a link has a number of advantages:
- Customers don’t need to remember passwords.
- After an order is placed, the customer's account is created automatically for the email address used.
- You can see all the customers who placed orders in your store, you can see them in your Control Panel → My sales → Customers page.
- A customer can see all the orders placed with their email address in their account.
- This is a more secure way of login than using a login/password. Since the login link is sent to the email address, only the owner of the email address is able to log into the account.