Thursday, November 7, 2013

Big Commerce doesn't yet have a way to query and find the active customer group for a logged in customer. So here's a series of posts to help you set up distinguishing characteristics and items you can show or hide based on those characteristics. 

1. Create at least two customer Groups and define one of the customer groups as the default customer group. If you create a Retail and Wholesale group use the Retail Group as the default group.


A. If you are coming late in the game and have a host of customers unassigned you can go  to: Customer > View all Customers >  Export all Customers Drop down > Select to CSV or XML File > Click Confirm > Choose the bulk edit template > Choose the Microsoft Excel (CSV) format > Click continue > Click the Export link > Click Download

B. Open your Excel/CSV file > go to the column labeled "Customer Group" > Enter in your default customer group name for each member that will be in the default group, which should be every member NOT in a specialized group. You can copy/paste here> once finished save the file >click "yes" to the type of save

C. Importing: Customers>import customers> click "yes" to the bulk-edit re-import > choose the file to upload > upload > click next > leave all the match case the same click next > start import

D. Congratulations! You have updated all of your customers.

2. Create a product category for one of the groups that only that group will see. For example a "Hot Deals" or "Last Chance." That only the Retail group will have access to.  You can also do the same for the wholesale group if you'd like.

A. In your group permissions set the product category visibility to reflect the category you have created. If you made a category for the Retail group make it so that the Retail group has access and make it so the Wholesale group does not and vice versa. Make sure to set it for ALL the categories and subcategories you have products in. 

Now you have set up a distinguishing characteristic in the form of a link that will only appear to a specific customer group.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Do you have a solution for hiding categories from non-logged in users? I don't want people that are not logged in to see the Wholesale category. I have not found a way to do this yet. ideas?