Published on

April 13, 2024

Ecommerce Technology

Shopify Customer Accounts: Guide to Creating a Customer Account Page

Amit RG

CEO

min read

Table of Contents

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Shopify Customer Accounts: In this post, we'll cover best practices, examples and apps you can use to create a beautiful, user-friendly experience for your repeat customers.

A successful ecommerce business would get around 30% to 70% of its revenues through repeat orders. The more mature the business, higher is the share of repeat orders. These repeat customers expect a dedicated customer account section from where they can do the most frequent actions. Businesses have reported the below benefits after investing in an optimized customer accounts portal:

Increase in re-order rates by 15%
Saving of up to 50% in customer support costs
Increase in customer reviews
Increase in signups for rewards program
Reduction in subscription cancellations by 15%

1. Does Shopify Have a Customer Portal?

If you are using a cart platform like Shopify, Magento, Bigcommerce, WooCommerce - then you get a customer accounts page out of the box - but that's not enough.

An Example of the Customers Account Template in Shopify

Too much time, money & resources are spent in the funnel optimization. Most ecom businesses obsess over the perfect ad creative, the perfect landing page design, the category pages, the product pages & the checkout experience.

But the most profitable customers are the repeat ones. The repeat customer journey is very different from a new customer. They usually have a different intent when they come on your ecommerce store. They may not start on the home page, they'll probably start from the customer accounts page. They may want to track an order, maybe re-order from there. They may want to make changes to their subscription, track their loyalty points, see their wishlist. Your job is to remove the friction in every action and make it easy to do everything that a repeat customer would want.

Example: Amazon does a brilliant job of creating a personalized customer account section.

Example: Customer Account Section from Amazon

2. Shopify Customer Account Page - Best Practices

As a repeat customer, I may want to do the below actions when I come to the website

See order history page
Reorder with a single click
See & manage subscriptions
Do returns & exchanges
Manage profile (change email, forgot password, change email subscriptions, etc)
Get help/contact support team

Let's break down each section, explore best practices and examples.

2.1. Customer Order History

On Shopify store customer accounts section must allow customers to easily track current order status. You can use the tracking functionality that comes out of the box with Shopify or use an app like Aftership to create a customized order tracking page.

Order listing page inside customer portal. Powered by Richpanel.

A custom order tracking page powered by Aftership

2.2. Repeat Last Order

This may not be applicable for all kind of businesses. But for certain categories like food, grocery, accessories, etc- this simple button has reported to increase repeat orders by 15% overnight.

Food apps like Uber Eats, Doordash have a prominent 'Repeat order' button inside customer accounts section

2.3. Manage Subscriptions

If your ecommerce store sells subscriptions using Recharge/Woocommerce Subscriptions/Bold Subscriptions, etc, then all these app come with a subscriptions portal. But you must want to embed that experience inside the customer's account page. Either let them manage subscriptions inside the customer account page or give them a link that auto-logs them to Recharge Subscription Portal.

Your subscriptions portal must allow for customers to

View subscriptions
Add/remove items from the subscription
Change frequency of the subscription
Skip a subscription
Change payment method
Change address
Cancel subscription with retention flows

We'll cover the cancel subscription with retention flows in a different blog.

Recharge subscription portal inside Richpanel Customer Portal. Watch Product Demo

2.4. Returns & Exchanges

Most ecommerce stores use a returns app powered by Loop Returns, Returnly, Happy Returns, Shipstation, etc. While all these apps come with their own returns portal for their customer. You may want to think about consolidating all this in one place inside customer accounts for a great user experience. Discover more on How to Handle & Manage Returns on Shopify Stores

Give your customers an easy way to start a return or exchange right from the customer accounts page & auto-log them in to the returns portal without asking them to login again.

Returns inside Customer Accounts Portal. schedule a personalized demo

2.5. Customers Details

So simple, yet so many businesses fail to optimize for this experience. Your customers may want to change their email, reset their password or add address to their profile. If you want repeat orders, act like you already do :) Please think through the experience you are creating for your repeat users and design for them.

Customer details section must allow customers to

Change name, email and address information
Change email subscription preferences
Reset password

Configuring the customer portal inside Richpanel. Signup for Free

2.6. FAQs & Customer Support

Make it easy for customers to get help and provide context ahead of reaching the customer support. Add order related FAQs, usage instructions and make it easy for customers to reach out to support. Download Shopify FAQ Template for your Ecommerce Business

Example of a customer reaching out to support from the customer accounts section

3. Ways to Improve Customer Login in Shopify

You may have the best customer accounts section but customers will not be able to access it without a seamless login flow. Customers will usually remember passwords of their top 4-5 visited websites. Some customers will do a guest checkout. Think of ways you can create an easy login experience.

Give customers multiple ways to access their customer accounts page

User name and password
Through one time authentication link sent on email
Through one time passcode sent on SMS

The last two options make it easy for guest users that did not create an account. Plus users do not even have to remember passwords.

Selecting Shopify Login method in Richpanel Customer Portal

4. Best Shopify Customer Account Apps That You Can Use

4.1. Richpanel: Customer Service App

Richpanel is an end-to-end customer support platform which includes customer portal and agent helpdesk. The dedicated customer accounts portal can be used by shoppers to track and manage orders, manage subscriptions, answer FAQs and contact support.

Customer Service Help Desk Dashboard. Watch Product Demo

Stats:

100 Reviews
5 star rating
1500+ clients
Pricing: Checkout Pricing Here

Find Richpanel: on Shopify App Store

Richpanel on the Shopify App Store

Checkout how leading E-Commerce brands are redefining customer service with Richpanel.

4.2. Flits: Customer Accounts Page

Flits is a dedicated app for customer's accounts page. It does a great job of beautifying the default customer's account section that comes with Shopify without the need to edit code.

Stats:

The 538 reviews
4.9 stars
5,000+ clients
Pricing: $4.99 to $29.99 per month

Find Flits: Customer Account Page on Shopify App Store

Flits: Customer Accounts Page on the Shopify App Store

Recommended Reading: Best Live Chat Apps for Shopify Store

5. How to Enable Customer Accounts on Shopify Store

When you enable customer accounts, Shopify store password-protected information about a customer's identity, order history, and current order status.

To enable, go to your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Checkout.

In the Customer accounts section, choose a customer account option:

Accounts are disabled: This means only guest checkouts are enabled and customer account is disabled
Accounts are optional: Recommended. Let customers create an account or checkout as guest.
Accounts are required: Customers will be required to create accounts before checkout

If you'd like to see Richpanel's shopify customer portal on your store, sign up for a free trial here.

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