How do 'You' use Customer Accounts?

[ComicDomain]

We're playing with the idea of using Customer Accounts, in the sense that a customer can log in and see a private part of the shop, just with the items that have been reserved for them. The customer could then add/remove items and pay for them online.

Q. Can the feature 'customer accounts' be used in that way?

How have you used the 'customer accounts' feature?

Any live examples would be appreciated and you can of course check out our site here: www.comicdomain.co.uk

Also any helpful stories good or bad would be of help - many thanks in advance

[Bruce]

Hi David,

We're playing with the idea of using Customer Accounts, in the sense that a customer can log in and see a private part of the shop, just with the items that have been reserved for them. The customer could then add/remove items and pay for them online.

Q. Can the feature 'customer accounts' be used in that way?

There is a way to do this. Normally the logged in customer is able to see the entire site, but you can restrict the normal internet shopper from seeing certain sections etc.

What you would have to do is to create a few 'Customer Groups' in View | Customer Groups, these are basically different price schedules for Customer accounts to use. You will find 'Retail' in here and this is the base price schedule that actinic operates on or the price the normal visitor would see.

You can now restrict a customer to a certain price schedule or customer group. This then enables you to make the product visible or not to a particular customer group by checking / unchecking the 'Enabled' and 'Product Visible' options against the particular customer gropu on the prices tab of a product.

For example, I created two additional; customer groups 'Test' and 'Wholesale' assigned customer accounts to each group and then on the prices tab of the 'calculator' product (default site ) I unchecked the Enabled' and 'Product Visible' options against 'Wholesale' and on the 'bunch of flowers' product I unchecked the options against 'Test'. Now a customer belonging to the test group on logging into the store does not see the 'bunch of flowers' product but can see the calculator.

With regards to the other questions I guess you will need feedback from fellow community users, so can others who use customer accounts please comment here.

Kind regards,