customer accounts

[lilysavage]

Is it possible to have customers enter their own details to create an account for themselves if they don't have one???

Thanks

[Darren]

Hi there.

There is a workaround available for this on page 59 of the latest Advanced User Guide available for download Here

Hope this helps.

[jxm28788]

pretty lame

My current website uses catalog, but I was going to use 'business' for my next site so I could use customer accounts. However, I have just been playing with accounts and they don't work anything like I expected - they look like they are designed for business-2-business rather than business-2-consumer.

What I want is for the customer to be able to sign up for an account then log in (straight away) and purchase using that account. There are two reasons for this - 1) Once they have typed in their address once they won't have to do it again, and 2) I was going to offer all 'members' an extra discount on all products.

However, there is no option for the customer to create their own accounts which is pretty lame.

As for the fix below...

1) It doesn't work if you have 'single add to basket button per page' selected

2) It doesn't have the option to press 'checkout now!' on the next screen as suggested - it just says 'you are being redirected - click here to hurry it up' (words to that effect)

3) It isn't imediate as it has to be created manually, so the customer would wander off elsewhere instead of waiting, or place the order without the discount.

4) It looks crap

So, what is everyone else doing?

Are there any other workarounds (3rd party add-ons)?

Is this 'fixed' in V7?

The best solution I can come up with is to have a tickbox in the checkout that says 'create an account for me, so I dont have to keep entering my name/address and so I get a discount off future orders'. This still requires manual creation, and doesn't allow discount off the first order which was going to be a big selling point ('get a discount off your 2nd order' doesn't quite have the same effect and would probably result in people placing stupidly small first orders or go somewhere else).

what a let down

[cdicken]

1) It doesn't work if you have 'single add to basket button per page' selected

You can have a separate section that contains the 'register now' product, and give the section a different shopping mode - I would go for 'Confirmation on Separate Page'.

2) It doesn't have the option to press 'checkout now!' on the next screen as suggested - it just says 'you are being redirected - click here to hurry it up' (words to that effect)

See my answer above.

3) It isn't imediate as it has to be created manually, so the customer would wander off elsewhere instead of waiting, or place the order without the discount.

True - but then that is a limitation of having an offline database rather than an online one. There is no way to add data to the store itself online.

4) It looks crap

Flattery will get you everywhere

[jxm28788]

I'm surprised this functionality wasn't added/fixed in v7. Registering users seems an almost standard part of most websites these days, it seems odd not to be able to do it. I realise this may be due to technical limitations (no DB online), but why haven't you moved on an online db model? It would seem to fix a number of problems with actinic...?

[cdicken]

Take a look at what I wrote here. That will hopefully give you an idea of our approach to development - i.e. we concentrate on certain areas for each release and work on getting them as complete and functional as possible.