Recognising a new customer

[rodneep]

What we do, is give a free extra product (our choice, and its the same one every time) to each new customer who orders for the first time through the shopping cart.

However, now that we are using Actinic Link and sending the orders staright through to Sage, (rather than typing the orders in manually and creating new customers manually on the fly in Sage)... we have no way of:
1. Recognising a new customer
2. Adding the free product onto the order.

It would be neat if we could get Actinic to do the work, and automatically add the product if the customer is new. (It's a product that we also sell, but there would be no problem in creating a duplicate with zero cost).

Can anyone think of a way of achieving this?

Thanks
Rod

[cdicken]

I cannot think of any way of recognising a new customer in Actinic I'm afraid.

I was thinking that you could maybe have a field in the checkout where people could tick it if they have not bought from you before (or vice versa - they tick it if they have bought from you before). This information would go though into the 'Memo' field in Sage. Is there any way in Sage of searching the content of this field?

[rodneep]

"I was thinking that you could maybe have a field in the checkout where people could tick it if they have not bought from you before (or vice versa - they tick it if they have bought from you before). "

Tried that Chris... yes... it works....

BUT... there's a big problem.

The "Remember me" option *keeps* that box checked :-(
Therefore a follow up second order comes through tagged as a new customer again.

Rod

[cdicken]

You need to go into the checkout template you edited and locate the code for the checbox that you have used. It will look something like:

<input type="CHECKBOX" NETQUOTEVAR:INVOICEWHATEVER name="WHATEVER" value="YES">

Remove NETQUOTEVAR:INVOICEWHATEVER so it reads

<input type="CHECKBOX" name="WHATEVER" value="YES">

That should mean that the field is unticked (by default) the next time people come through.