Default Customer Group Upon Registration

[SCPKat]

This may be a question for Gil, but would appreciate any assistance anyone can provide.

I have a :confused: question that I can't find an answer to here. I understand that price 1 is used as a default for retail customers. It is seen regardless of whether a customer is logged in or not, unless i set the product to the settting where they must log in to see the price.

I want to be able to give ANY registered customer a discount, and those who don't want to set up an account would have to pay the list price.


What I want to do is have the list price as the price people see when they initially enter the website, but would like for them to see their price (P2) once they log in. I don't want them to have to select a customer group to join when they register - I want to do it for them and have ANYONE that registers an account automatically placed in the P2 group. How do I do this?

I know I can change current customers to P2, but I don't want to have to look for new customers every day and manually change them.

I also don't want to use the 'must log in to view price' because I feel that will cause me to lose some customers.

I also don't want to make the customer do any extra work by having to subscribe to a particular level. They're not going to understand what it is, and therefore won't know to register for it.

I want to set P2 as the default price group when someone registers. How do I do that? :rolleyes:

Thanks
Kat

[GonzaloGil]

The register account link can be modified to automatically register them for a specific group...

When you go to a group on the admin, you can see there is a registration link on the bottom.

What you want to do is modify all pages that say "REGISTER" and hard code that link, so that they don't have to choose what group to go into...

We are considering adding a "default group" option to the registration that would make this easier but for now, this is the only way around it

[SCPKat]

THANK YOU. Gosh, I wish I'd asked this questions early yesterday. I'd've saved myself many hours of frustration.

Such a simple answer. Yet it never occured to me to hard code the link.


Thanks.

Kathy

[SCPKat]

One more question. I understand that all I need to do is change the URL to point ot the registration page if someone clicks on the register button. However, how do I code the checkout_1 page where a customer can create an account as they are checking out.

I've scoured the code on that page, and I can't find anywhere that I can specify which price group a customer will automatically be registered.

Which brings me to another question.

If the retail price of a product $16.95, and is the price someone pays if they choose not to create a customer account. The registered customers prices is $16.50, but it can only be seen IF the customer is logged into their account.

What happens if a NEW customer puts a product in the cart at $16.95, then decides to create an account during the checkout process. Will the new registered customer price of $16.50 automatically be updated in their cart?

Kathy

[GonzaloGil]

Yes, once an item is in your basket, during key parts of the website (view cart, checkout, etc) the system is checking Inventory, Price changes, etc. So, if they do add to cart, and then log in, the prices will update automatically without having them to remove them and add them back into their cart.

[SCPKat]

I understand that part. What I don' understand is DURING checkout, the customer is given the opportunity to register on the 'checkout' page. I don't see where I can specify what Customer group that person will be registered in in that form.

I tested it, and in its current form it puts a customer in the Price Group 1.

You said earlier that I can modify the URL for the MAIN registration form, which I did. I changes it to http://www.scpbooks.com/register.asp?cg=30 which puts anyone registering through that page into the Price Group 2

How do I change the form on the 'checkout.asp?step=1' page so that when they register during checkout the system will put them in Price group 2 automatically. There is no where to specify a URL or price group.

The code looks like the following.



<!--start create account block-->
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
<tr>
<td class="checkout-headers" colspan="2">
[checkout1_Header-createnewaccount]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
<table width="100%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" class="alternative">
<tr class="item">
<td width="34%" align="right" class="item">
<strong>[CustomerInfo_email]:</strong>
</td>
<td width="66%">
<input type="text" size="25" name="email" value="[email]" class="txtBoxStyle">
<!--START: emailrequired-->
<!--START: req_email-->
<img src="assets/templates/common/images/error2.gif" width="12" height="12"><!--END: req_email-->
<!--END: emailrequired-->
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="item">
<td align="right" class="item">
<strong>[CustomerInfo_password]: </strong>
</td>
<td>
<input type="password" size="12" name="pass" class="txtBoxStyle">
<!--START: passwordrequired-->
<!--START: req_pass-->
<img src="assets/templates/common/images/error2.gif" width="12" height="12"><!--END: req_pass-->
<!--END: passwordrequired-->
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right">
<input type="checkbox" value="1" name="maillist" [maillist]></td>
<td class="item">
[checkout1_joinmailinglist]</td>
</tr>
</table>
<br />
</td>
</tr>
<!--end create account block-->

[SCPKat]

Gonzalo? You there?

Gonzalo,

Hellooooooooooo! Do you have an answer for this question?

How do I change the form on the 'checkout.asp?step=1' page so that when they register during checkout the system will put them in Price group 2 automatically. There is no where to specify a URL or price group.

[GonzaloGil]

The work around i gave you would work if they register prior to buying. If they are registering as they are checking out (by just filling out the checkout), then this will not work, they would end up paying the full retail price you show on the store.

I don't really understand the purpose of this if you want to give EVERYONE the discount, why not just display the discounted price to begin with? I can understand the idea of "Register first and get better pricing" that way you have their information perhaps for a sales rep to contact them when they register even if they end up not buying yet, but if you are essentially giving everyone the discount why not just show the discount, or, make a promotion so that as soon as they add to cart they see that they are getting X% off, with or without registering.

[SCPKat]

Well what I've found it that is someone takes the time to register, then it increases the chance that they will return again to shop. I also want to give folks who take the time to register the discount. Those folks who just site shop for the lowest price aren't the customers I'm targeting.

I've found that when I have a 20% off sale, I get people buying that never buy any other time. I guess some people would say as sale is a sale, but I prefer to reward my loyal customers who shop with me on a regular basis. Providing them with the discount for just registering, will also allow me to offer free shipping to certain customer groups, or even give a micro sale to a certain group. Making them register, gets them in the system.

Another thing is getting them to register and log in to see their pricing, also allows me to keep my competitors hanging since they won't be able to see my groups. Even if one of my competitors does register they'd never be able to see anything but my P1 group.

I have 5 customer groups.

P1 - 3% Disc
P2 - 5%
P3 - 10%
P4 - 15%
P5 - 20%

I guess what I'll do is completely remove the register when the check out option on the first page of the checkout, then they will either have to pay full price, or back out of the checkout process and sign up, then check out.

Thanks

Kat

[GonzaloGil]

Ok, well here is what would happen if you follow the idea I had given you:

You would obviously let customers know, REGISTER and get 3% off, you would provide link, probably some sort of banner or something very visible.

Those that click the link, they would register and get the discount.

Those that do not care to register, go through checkout, they purchase at the prices listed, and i suppose they are ok paying that price.

So, if your goal was to make sure that you got them to register, you did, those that wanted to register did. Those that purchased at full price also registered. So, you are getting your goal accomplished.

Now, those that purchased at full price, you have the option to contact them and give them a refund, its optional, and, if your goal is to make people come back and buy more, I would say that would be a very nice thing to do and again, if they were ok paying the price before the 3%, getting money back without asking for it is going to be great news to your new customers.

Yes, the best solution would be to have a default group selected, and it is something we are working on, but until then, you should consider this approach.

[GonzaloGil]

Oh, 1 more thing, even when we do make the registration default to a group, you would still have an issue. .The purchase would be made for the full price, as the customer registration happens at the same time as the purchase, so even with this feature, what you are trying to accomplish would not work the way you want it, you essentially must make them register before they buy...ie. perhaps making the cart "Must be logged in to buy" which is an option on the cart now, they can view pricing etc, but to buy they have to log in, and then you can hard code those login links to the right group as discussed before.

This however will make it so those that don't want to go through the hassle of registering go away, and you won't even have an incomplete cart for them, so you have to judge what's more important to you.

[concession-supply.com]

A little confused here. When you check "allow registration" you are given the URL to the customer group registration page, ie: register=cg3. Well, what this also does, is allows customers to Select that group from the pull-down on the main register page, which is not what we want. If we uncheck "allow registration" will the same URL still work? What we would want to do is have a seperate register page for wholesale accounts and link to it from an extra page of content. We would not want them to be able to sign up from the main register page. Does this make sense?
Also, we couldn't get the "message" to display on the registration page when configured.

[dmoore]

omg this is very simular to what I have been dealing with.
its like 3dcart keeps adding small things to the abilities we can do but doesnt look at the big picture and give complete solutions.
They force a register page on the checkout page which functions differently from the main register page.
they dont allow you to show different pricing group values at the same time.

I have added these to the list in "Wanted features" but for now we have to pay extra to have them add it to our site code.

solution we are temporary doing is rough. our DC office is going to be outraged when they see this temp solution next week. (we are going live in 10 days or so)

for the registration what I do is check if they are logged in on the checkout page and if they are not logged in then I redirect them (with javascript) to the main register/login page. after they register/login they go to 2 dif pages so I added to those pages blaring links and messages to go back to the checkout page.

the showing 2+ group prices at the same time (when logged in or not) is needed because how does a customer know if they are getting the better price or not? they dont because the price just changes to the better price when they are logged in and again you cant show 2+ group prices at the same time. so my temp solution is to copy the different group prices into the additional fields and not show [price] but show the additional field values.

This way they always see all prices and when on the cart page they can only tell they are getting the better price because they see all prices on the product and the real price on the totals column.

probably hard to understand what I am saying and our site is blocked right now from viewing.

Doug

[Morgana]

default customer group

Has the ability to have a default customer group been implemented? If so, where do I assign a default group?

[cbsteven]

No. What I do is I have the registration links go to a group-registration page, so that handles the people that register directly.

The people that register during the checkout process cannot have a group assigned, but I run a query against the Advanced API once per day to change the group of everyone who does not have one, to my default group number. looks like:

"UPDATE customers SET discount=8,last_update='" & Date & "' WHERE discount = 0;"