Table of content

Managing Customers

You have to take good care of your customers. That means making sure their profile contains all the information you need to have a package shipped to them, following up on their support requests, creating special discount groups, knowing which orders have been completed and which have been abandoned, and much more.

The "Customers" tab enables you to check on your customers' details, create groups which you can apply discounts to, view the current shop carts, handle customer service...

Viewing a Customer's Information

The first page under the "Customers" tab gives you a list of all the registered users on your shop. This gives you a bird's eye view of your customers, with some details thrown in which you can use to sort and search accounts:

• Gender. Customers can declare their gender, which can help you better customize their experience. There are four default genders (Mr., Ms., Miss and Unknown), but you can create more in the "Genders" page under the "Customers" tab.
• Age. Knowing the age of you customers can also help you better target your demographics, and choose to sell products that appeal more to them.
• Enabled. Indicates whether the account is active or not. You can disable an account by clicking on the green checkmark.
• News.. Indicates whether the account is subscribed to your shop's newsletter or not. You can unsubscribe it clicking on the green checkmark.
• Opt.. Indicates whether the account has accepted to receive e-mails from your partners or not. You can unsubscribe it clicking on the green checkmark. Do not subscribe a user to these e-mails without their consent, as this is considered spam.
• Registration date and last visit can always be useful when sorting user accounts.
• Actions. You can edit the user's account, simply view it it full (with its messages, orders, addresses, vouchers, etc.), or trash it forever.

Creating A New Account

To create a user account manually, select "Add New". A form will appear.

Fill out the customer's information:

• Gender.
• First name, Last name, E-mail address. Those are essential: the names are used in the confirmation e-mails that PrestaShop sends, and the e-mail address is used for log-in.
• Password. Choose a password, at least 5 characters long.
• Accounting number. This may be useful for your own accounting.
• Birthday. This information can be used for birthday e-mails and temporary discounts.
• Status. You may wish to create an account, but not have it yet active.
• Newsletter. Can be used by the "Newsletter" module, for sending regular information to those customers who requested it.
• Opt-in. Can be used by modules for sending regular partner promotions to those customers who requested it. Do not subscribe a user to these e-mails without their consent, as this is considered spam.
• Group access. Having customer groups enables you to create group discounts. Many other PrestaShop feature can also be group-restricted. You will learn more about group in the "Groups" section of this chapter of the PrestaShop user guide.
• Default customer group. No matter how many groups that customer belongs to, s/he should always have one main group.

Viewing A User's Information

In the case where you would like to have more information on a given customer, you can click on the "view" button, located at the end of the row in the customer's list. A new page will appear.

The various sections provide you with some key data on the user:

• Customer information, first and last name, e-mail address, ID, sign-up date, date of last visit, rank.
• Information regarding the subscription to the store's newsletter and subscription to ads from partnering companies, the age, date of last update, and whether or not the account is active.
• Private notes from the store's employees (i.e. you or your team).
• Messages sent by the customer to the shop's team (through customer service).
• The group to which the customer belongs.
• Summary of customer's past purchases. Amount spent, type of payment, order status. For more information about each order, click on the icon in the "Actions" column.
• Summary of the products that were orders by a customer. Among other things, this enables you to know when a customer is very fond of a product, and maybe create a special discount for the 10th purchase. Clicking on a product directs to the order to which that product is tied.
• Registered addresses.
• Available vouchers / cart rules.
• Carts that the customers has created (but not necessarily validated) since sign-up. When your customer is currently on your shop, you can see what is being added to the cart in real time.
• Previous connection to the shop.

Searching for a Customer

Searching for a customer on your PrestaShop shop can be done two different ways.

The first method is to enter the information you have into the PrestaShop search bar, which is found in the top center of your back-office. By selecting "everywhere", "by name" or "by ip address", you can perform a search based on:

• ID: the numbers that is assigned to the customer in the database).
• First or last name. Note that you cannot search for both: choose either "john" or "doe", as "john doe" won't work.
• E-mail address.
• IP address: you can search using the IP of the latest connection to your shop.

The results, if any, are then presented: you can sort the results by ID, gender, e-mail, birthday, registration date, number of orders and whether or not the customer is active.

The second method consists of going to the customer tab, and listing all of your customers.

From there, you can complete the fields to filter your results according to the following criteria: ID, Sex, First Name, Last Name, e-mail address, age, registration date, subscription to the newsletter, subscription to partnering ads, last connection date. Enter your criteria and click the "Filter" button in the top right-hand corner of the table.

Click the "Reset" button to go back to the complete list.

Addresses

By clicking on the "Addresses" sub-tab you will have access to the list of your customer's home addresses. You can edit them using the "Edit" button, or delete them altogether.

You also have the possibility to create them yourself with the "Add New" button.

Below the addresses table is the "Set required fields for this section" button. It gives you access to a form where you can indicate if a database field is necessary or not by checking the appropriate boxes: this way, you can make it so fields such as "company" or "phone number" are mandatory when a customer is registering a new address on your shop.

Groups

PrestaShop enables you to give your customers certain privileges, by assigning them to Groups. You can create as many customer groups as needed, and assign a user to as many groups as you like.

This is all done from the "Groups" page, under the "Customers" tab.

By default, three special groups are available:

• Visitor. All persons without a customer account or unauthenticated.
• Guest. Customer who placed an order with the Guest Checkout.
• Customer. All persons who created an account on your shop.

To create more groups, click the "Add New" button: you will get a creation form.

• Name. Use a short and descriptive name.
• Discount (%). The discount that you set for members of this group apply to all products on your shop. You may prefer to not set any discount value, and create cart rules. You can learn more about cart rules in the next chapter of this guide, "Setting Price Rules".
• Price display method. PrestaShop is frequently used in the Business to Business (B2B) sector. You can create a group of customers who can buy products without paying the tax. The drop-down menu gives you a choice between "tax included" and "tax excluded".
• Show prices. By default, all users of your shop can view the prices. You may prefer some to not have access to your product prices. For instance, you could make it so users can only view prices if they have an account: from the groups list, click on the green checkmark in the "Show prices" column for the "Visitors" group to turn it into a red cross.

You can add a customer to a group of your choice by clicking on the Edit icon on the corresponding line. Then, on the "Groups" table, select the group to which you want your customer to belong.

Shopping Carts

PrestaShop contains some very powerful marketing features that enable you to see the products that customers are adding to their carts in real time. There are two ways to achieve this.

1. Consult their carts in detail directly from the customer information file by clicking on the button from the customer profile in the "carts" section.
2. Go to the "Carts" sub-tab, under the "Customer" tab. You will see all of the shopping carts that have items in them. For instance, you can filter your results by the date that they were added. You can see the profile of the customers who check your site out, and, if you wish, use this information to improve your commercial performance.

In both cases, you can consult the details of a customer's shopping cart.

The most important information is presented in the "Cart Summary" section. You can see what products the customer purchased, the price of each item, the quantity they desire, and the total value of their cart.