As Matt asked, how would you handle Price Groups if the user didn't have an account.


We are mainly a wholesale website, and use a LOT of price groups depending on how much volume the customer does.

I've been wondering about this a bit for my site (I currently use the logic you just described).

Why force existing customers to login? If they enter an email address, I can search for an existing account and discounts that might apply to that account. If an account exists, but no discount applies, then I'm thinking of just attaching the new order to the existing account and send them the receipt (and possibly the password again).

The risk is that customer B accidentally entered the email address for customer A. So A gets both the receipt and the order confirmation. But that's also a danger the first time through. I have not increased the danger or risk...although I guess it gets more likely to make a typo error each time you place an order. For example, if customer B places 100 orders on 100 different days, it is probably getting likely there will be a typo in the email address if they never login. To avoid typos, I'm thinking of asking for the email address twice.

If there is a discount, I can display a message and then suggest they login. But they may decline (perhaps their time is worth more than the discount). In that case, I'll proceed as above...attach the order to the existing account that I found and go.

Am I missing something?

From the repeat customer's perspective, picking an address from a list may be worth the annoyance of login. So it makes sense to offer a login option. And I should not expose the address book without login, otherwise malicious people will enter random email addresses to discover mailing addresses and phone numbers.

However, I think I could offer discounts without logging in. In my business (downloads only), the worst thing that would happen is that someone will hunt around for an email that has a good discount attached. If they find one, they know that email address represents a customer, and they get a discount.

Although they now know the email address represents a customer, they don't know the name, phone number, etc. And it took quite a bit of work to find it (limiting the number of times it will happen). And if they use the email address to place the order, then they will end up sending their complete contact information to the email address (via the order confirmation). So they end up giving away much more information than they get.

And giving a discount to an anonymous customer does not bother me. In real life, that happens now at the grocery store. And if I forget my loyalty card or want to remain anonymous, the cashier will often use their own (Albertsons) or offer to give me an anonymous card (Safeway). The cashier may get credit for the sale (and perhaps some additional discount down the road), and I get the discount on the sale today. Everybody is happy.

On a related note, do you have any ideas for dealing with duplicate accounts? The typical scenario is a customer that changes his email address and forgets his password. That customer cannot reset their password since their email address changed. This forces them to create another account, causing them to loose their address book and order history. For merchants that have a back end accounting system where tracking customers is important, duplicate accounts are a nightmare. Providing a way for merchants to merge duplicate accounts would be great.

A possible way to reduce duplicate accounts is to provide another way for a customer to reset their password and change their email address; this is often achieved by asking "secret questions" of the customer. The problem with this in light of our conversation is that the customer would have to enter the answers to these questions, providing a greater barrier to account creation. Perhaps you could ask a series of questions based on their order history and address book. For example, require the customer to enter their full name, the street number of their billing address, and a valid order number . I'm not sure that this would be secure enough, however.