Storefront > Settings > People > Customer Types
How Customer Types can be used
Hide Products by Customer Type
Overview
A Customer Type is a group of visitors to your site that can be defined by you. It is useful in providing unique content to different customers.
Some common use cases are:
- Pricing: set different pricing for different customers
- Discounts: define discount rules based on customer types
- Redirect: redirect customers on login to different pages
- Rewards Points: include/exclude a Customer Type from Earning Reward Points
- Custom Content: display unique content to different customers using merge codes
- Custom Shipping methods: define custom shipping methods based on customer type
- Hide specific Products: hide special and exclusive products to limit them to specific customers
How to Create a Customer Type
By default, all customers are in a Default group and will see the same content and pricing. You can create new Customer types and define unique pricing, content, discounts, and shipping.
Customer types can be created/modified by browsing to Settings > People > Customer Types and clicking the “New” button located at the top right of the screen.
Clicking New or editing an existing Customer Type will bring up the “Customer Type Edit” screen.
|
Setting |
Description |
|
Customer Type |
This is the name for the customer type. You can enter types like Wholesale, Retail, Loyalty, or anything else that meets your requirements. |
|
Description |
A brief description of the customer type |
|
Login Redirect Link |
When this customer type logs in they will be redirected to the specified page. The chosen link needs to be added to a menu using the Menus & Navigation feature. |
|
Exclude Customer Type From Earning Reward Points |
Enabling will exclude the selected customer type from earning rewards points. |
|
Can See Pricing |
Enabling this option allows the customer type to see prices on products if your store hides them by default. This is to work with "Require Login for Pricing". |
|
Disable Login |
If selected, customers of this customer type cannot login. |
|
Disabled Login Redirect URL |
Provide a Redirect URL to send a customer with this customer type to a specific URL. |
Note: For customer type rules to take effect the customer has to be logged in so the system can identify them. If a customer type is set to the Default Customer Type Price Level, and is set to Disable Login, customers will require approval from the store owner. Do this by changing them to another customer type to log in.
How Customer Types can be used
Pricing by Customer Type:
Price Calculator
Catalog > Power Features > Price Calculator
Under the pricing calculator you can set up advanced pricing rules. The customer type is useful in creating rules for specific customer types.
Per Product Pricing
Catalog > Product Edit > Pricing > New Price/Edit
You can set sales or special pricing on a per product basis using the Pricing tab in the Product Editor. You can also use customer types to apply the pricing to specific customer types.
Default Price Level
Settings > Catalog > General
You can specify the Default Price Level of your store using Customer Type information. This would be the default price new visitors see.
Discounts by Customer Type:
Marketing > Discounts
You can create discount rules that apply to different customer types. For example, Rewards customers can get higher discounts than normal customers. You could also create coupon codes and make them available to certain types of customers only.
Navigate to Storefront > Marketing > Discounts and click New to create a new Discount Method.
Create a Method and Click Save. Under Rule Definitions, click New Rule.
In the Rule Type field select “customer type” to create a Discount Rule using Customer Types and then hit Save.
Your new Discount Method will now appear in the Discount Methods area. It is here that you can also edit or delete it.
Redirects by Customer Type:
Storefront > Settings > People > Customer Types
Customer type redirects bring specified customers to a set page when the customer logs in. These can be special content pages, custom home pages, or any page that would be useful.
The page redirection is set through the “Login Redirect Link” dropdown field in the Customer Type Edit panel.
Customer Types can also be specified to not be allowed to login. The following merge code will need to be placed, replacing other login links, to redirect the customer to the content page selected in the drop down.
##LOGINLOGOUTLINK[loginpage=login2.aspx,redirect=default.aspx,registerurl=register.aspx]##
This will need to be placed exactly as listed above. The information contained in the merge code is necessary.
Using Custom Content with Customer Types:
Merge Code
This merge code can be placed anywhere HTML is accepted to swap out content depending on customer type. HTML Editor, WYSIWYG Editor, etc...
The colored text below is what would need to be replaced with your site-specific information when placing this in your store.
##IF[VisitingCustomerType=XYZ]## directed content ##ELSE## default content ##ENDIF##
Examples:
##IF[VisitingCustomerType=Member]## <a href="/MemberPage.aspx">Member</a>
##ELSE## <a href="/default.aspx">NonMember</a>
##ENDIF##
##IF[VisitingCustomerType=Customer]## <img src="http://www.cart.com/IsCustomerType.jpg http://www.cart.com/IsCustomerType.jpg" alt="Customer"/>
##ELSE## <img src="http://www.cart.com/IsNotCustomerType.jpg http://www.cart.com/IsNotCustomerType.jpg" alt="NotCustomer"/>
##ENDIF##
Custom Shipping Methods:
Storefront > Settings > Shipping > Custom Shipping Methods
If you are using custom shipping methods you can charge different rates based on customer types by clicking "New" and creating a New Custom Shipping Method.
Once a new Custom Shipping Method is created and saved, the method can be edited and a New Shipping Rule can be added.
Within the Shipping Rule Editor the rule can be specified for a customer type.
After all rules have been set, click Save to keep and enable the custom rules.
Hide Products by Customer Type
If you have exclusive products, or specialized products for specific customer types, you can hide them by customer type.
Note: This option is not available if a store is set to "Show All Catalog" in the Active Catalog settings for the store
Navigate to Storefront > Catalog > Products > Edit Product > Stores. Checking the different Customer types will hide the product from customers with those types.
This feature is also supported in our Product import/export tool.
| Field | Format |
| InactiveStoreList | store~customertypeid|store~customertypeid |
For more information on imports/exports you can view the following articles: