Customers

One record per email

A customer record is created the first time somebody orders, whether or not they made an account. Signing in later attaches the earlier orders to the account rather than creating a second record.

Guest checkout does not produce a lesser customer. It produces the same record with no password on it.

Signing in

Customers sign in with a one-time code sent by email — no password to choose, forget or reuse. Codes are short-lived and single-use, and repeated wrong guesses lock the attempt rather than allowing an unlimited number of tries.

What the record holds

  • Contact details and saved addresses, with a default for shipping and billing
  • Order history, lifetime spend and order count
  • Tags you add yourself
  • Marketing consent, with when and how it was given
  • Notes, which the customer never sees

Lifetime spend and order count are worked out from the orders, so a refund is reflected without anybody remembering to adjust a total.

Merging a guest cart

Somebody who fills a cart, then signs in, keeps their cart. If they already had one, the two are merged: quantities of the same item are combined rather than one silently replacing the other, and anything no longer purchasable is dropped with an explanation.

Segments

A segment is a saved set of conditions — not a list you maintain by hand. Membership is worked out when you use it, so it is never stale.

Conditions can be built on: total spent, order count, last order date, signup date, marketing consent, tags, and email.

"Spent more than $500", "has not ordered in 90 days", "accepts marketing and is tagged wholesale" are all segments. They can target discounts, and they can be exported.

Consent is stored with when it was given and by what means. Withdrawing it is immediate. Nobody who has not opted in is treated as having opted in — a blank is not a yes.

Privacy requests

Two obligations are supported directly:

  • Export — everything held about a customer, in a file you can send them.
  • Erasure — the personal details are removed while the orders remain as anonymised financial records.

Erasure does not delete order history. It cannot: you are required to keep records of sales. What it does is sever them from the person, so what is left is a transaction rather than a customer.

Where to find it

Manage → Customers, with saved segments under Customers → Segments.