How do I Use Customer Groups?

Using Customer Groups & Price Levels with Shift4Shop

Shift4Shop's Price Levels allow you to configure your products with different prices which are then applicable to individual Customer Groups.

For example, you can create a special Customer Group for your store's "Loyal Customers" and; when customers in that group log into their accounts, they are shown their discounted pricing. The most common use for this feature would be setting up a wholesale group which allows you to run both retail and wholesale versions of you store from within one Shift4Shop Store.

This article will describe how to add wholesale pricing to your store as well as offer a glimpse at setting up customer groups and limiting access to areas of your site to individual groups if necessary.

Create Customer Groups

Log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager and, using the left hand navigation menu:

1. Go to Customers >Manage Groups 
   
2. Click on "+Add New" at the top right of the page

You will then be presented with 4 fields to populate. These are:

• Group Name
  This will be the name of your pricing group. The group name will display on the various options within the store that take customer pricing groups into consideration. For example, "Allow Access" on the product's Advanced Tab and Category settings, individual customer settings, and payment/shipping configurations that are available to specific customer groups.
• Description
  This will be a brief description of the customer group intended for your own internal reference.
• Minimum Order
  Here you will specify a minimum order amount customers must have in their cart before they are able to take advantage of the pricing level. For example in the case of a wholesale pricing group, you may want to dictate that the customers must order a minimum amount of $100 in order to qualify their purchases at the wholesale price level.
• Price Level
  Use this drop down to select which Pricing Level the group will use. There are 10 individual pricing levels, and they can be set on each individual product's "Advanced Tab."

3. Once you have populated these fields, click "Save" to finish the process.

There are also additional settings that can be configured for each group. To configure the group's additional settings, select your group from the list, and look to the far right of its listing to click on the "Action >Edit" button. You will now see the same parameters listed above along with the following:

• Non Taxable
  Use this setting to make the customer group non-taxable and waive any tax charges on the group's order.
• Allow Registration
  Use this setting if you'd like to allow registration to this group from your store front. In other words, when adding themselves to your store during checkout, customers will be able to select which group they would like to belong to. By default, this setting is turned off, so you can manually move customers to special groups as needed. However, for your purposes, you may want to set this option.
  
  If Allow Registration is checked, a new set of options will appear once you click Save. These are:
  
  
  • Auto Approve
    Setting this will determine if the customers are automatically approved for the specific customer group they register for. Again, this is left unchecked by default to allow you more control over who takes advantage of special pricing. For example, you may not want all customers to be able to sign up for wholesale pricing. Instead you will want to manually approve them as they register. However, as a merchant, you may have specific needs where you would want to allow automatic registration approval. Therefore, we leave the option in your hands.
  • Register Page
    Use this drop down menu to select the Template style used for the registration page. By default there is only one style to choose from and it is controlled by a template named "registration_0.html." If you'd like to add your own styles, you may upload your own template to your design theme folder. Simply name it registration_1.html or registration_2.html as needed to create additional styles in the drop down menu.
  • Message
    Use this text box to customize a message to your customers when they are registering for this group. Note: This text box will take regular text as well as HTML formatted text.
  • Registration Link
    This will be the URL to the specific group's registration page. This can be used if you'd like to place the direct URL in an email or external site.

Set Your Price Levels

The next step will be to assign prices to your product Pricing Levels.

1. Go to Products >Product List
2. Look for the item you would like to edit and click on its ID or Name to open it up
   You can also look to the far right of the listing and click on the "Action >Edit" button
3. Click on the Product's Advanced Tab.
4. Scroll down to the Price Levels section of the page
5. Type in the price for the product's corresponding customer group level
   For example, if the Pricing Group uses level 2 pricing, enter the level 2 pricing on the product here.

6. Look to the top right of the page and click on the "Save" button
7. Repeat for all of your products.

Restricting Access

Through the use of Customer Groups and Pricing Levels, you can also restrict access to certain Products, Categories and Site Content Pages so that they only appear for one particular customer group. For example, you may have items sold in bulk which are available only to your Wholesale Customers. Perhaps you are using a Smart Category for Free Shipping items which you'd like to only show to your retail customer group.

The following information will help you use Customer Groups to limit access as needed.

Restricting Product

To restrict a product page to a certain Customer Group you will first need to specify login requirements for the product. This will make it so that your customers need to log into or otherwise create an account on your page in order to view product details. This can be done through a setting that is available globally for the whole store or individually at the product level. For our purposes here, we will describe the process at the individual product level.

1. Go to Products >Product List
2. Look for the item you would like to edit and click on its ID or Name to open it up
   You can also look to the far right of the listing and click on the "Action >Edit" button
3. Click on the Product's Advanced Tab.
4. In the "General Options" section, look for the Login Required drop down.
5. Use the dropdown to select "To View Product"
6. Click Save at the top right

The product now has a login requirement in order to have it viewed by the site visitor.

As mentioned at the start of this section, the same setting can be applied globally to your entire store by going to Settings >General >Store Settings and selecting the "Checkout" tab along the top.

Within this tab, you will see an area labeled "Require Login" which will apply the same change described above - except this time it would be for ALL products in the store.

After saving the product, you will have a new area in the Advanced Tab labeled "Allow Access."

To continue:

7. In the Allow Access section, choose the group you would like to allow access to.
8. Click Save

The product will now only be viewed by customers belonging to the selected Customer Group and only available to them when they first log into their respective accounts.

Restricting Categories

Aside from restricting products, you can also restrict whole categories to a specific customer group. For example, you may have a special members only area that is only available to one particular cusotmer group. To restrict a category:

1. Go to Products >Categories
2. Click on the name of the category or look to the far right and click on its "Action >Details" button.

This will take you to the category's details page where you can set various optins for the category's display.

3. Click on the +Icon for Page Settings. on the right hand side of the page.
4. Look down towars the "Allow Access" section and use the drop down menu to select the customer group
5. Click on the "Save" button at the top right of the page.

The category will now only be viewed by customers belonging to the selected Customer Group and only available to them when they first log into their respective accounts.

Restricting Site Content Pages

You can also restrict Site Content pages to a specific customer group. For example, you may have product news or additional content that is only intended for your VIP customers. Or perhaps you'd like to restrict your Blog pages for only retail visitors. The following steps will illustrate this function.

1. Go to Content >Site Content
2. Click on the "Action >Content" button for the Site Content Page you'd like to restrict access to.
3. In the Allow Access field, choose the customer group you would like to allow access to.
4. Click Save at the top right of the page to commit your changes.

The site content page is now restricted to the selected customer group.