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Understanding the customer portal

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Sections

Customers can edit their subscriptions, update billing information, or see their purchase history through the customer portal. This comprehensive guide reviews the sections of the customer portal and the settings you can adjust to enable or disable certain features.

Tip: If this is your first time using the customer portal, be sure to take our course Adjusting customer portal settings. You can come back here for a refresher any time you need it. 

Customer portal types

Customer portal themes

Note: Stores must be using Classic customer accounts to use this feature. Shopify's new Customer accounts is not compatible with the Recharge customer portal. 

Affinity customer portal theme provides a clean user interface that allows users to manage their subscriptions seamlessly. This customer portal theme is enabled by default and is recommended to use. 

Novum and Prima are also available customer portal themes. Similar to how you can select different stylings for your eCommerce store through the themes section, you can choose different customer portal themes in Recharge.

Refer to our dedicated guides for more information about each theme:

Recharge Theme Engine

Recharge Theme Engine is available exclusively to merchants on the Recharge Pro or custom plans. Theme Engine allows you to customize the interface of your store's customer portal. You can tailor the look and feel of the portal to fit your store's style and branding.

Although the PRO Theme Engine option can be selected in your Customer portal settings, adjustments to the customer portal should be done through the Theme Editor (click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Theme editor). 

Tip: Refer to our Customer portal comparison chart to determine which portal is right for you. 

Enable the customer portal

  1. Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Customer Portal.
  2. Select your customer portal type in the Customer portal section.
    1. If using Customer portal themes, select Themes. 
    2. If using the Recharge Theme Engine, select PRO Theme Engine.
  3. If using Customer portal themes, select the desired theme in the Themes section.
  4. Click Save. 

Test the customer portal

  1. Select Customers in your merchant portal.
  2. Search and select the customer's name.
  3. On the Customer overview page, click Customer portal links to access a dropdown.
  4. In the dropdown, choose the section of the customer portal to preview.
  5. Click the Preview portal icon to see the customer-facing view for that section.

Specify the customer portal location

Note: BigCommerce merchants do not see the Customer portal location. All BigCommerce stores are automatically defaulted to Hosted by Recharge, as the Embedded in platform storefront mode is not compatible.

Merchants using the Shopify Checkout Integration or the Recharge Checkout on Shopify can choose between two options for where the customer portal will be hosted:

  • Hosted by Recharge - The customer portal is hosted by Recharge and will not inherit any styling or style changes from your store theme.
  • Embedded in platform storefront - The customer portal is embedded within your Shopify theme and takes on the styling, logo, and menu from your Shopify theme. 

This is important for your store depending on your theme. The CSS from your Shopify theme can conflict with the customer portal code and switching to hosted will resolve this. If you notice an issue with the CSS styling on your portal, switch to Hosted by Recharge momentarily to see if the issue persists.

Hosted customer portal URL

Updating the portal from embedded to hosted will cause the portal URL to change, and rechargeapps.com will be included in the URL. Merchants on the Recharge Pro Plan using the Hosted by Recharge option, can follow our guide for Setting up a custom customer portal domain if you want to customize this.

Example of a Hosted customer portal URL

Customize the customer portal theme

You can customize the style of your customer portal header and footer with HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. You can also modify the credit card page with CSS. Updating the style through CSS requires custom code and is not supported by Recharge as per our design policy. If you require further assistance, visit the Recharge Agency Partner Directory.

Stores using the Affinity customer portal theme can customize the theme directly in the Shopify theme editor. For more information and customization options, refer to Customizing the Affinity customer portal theme. 

To customize the customer portal: 

  1. Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Customer Portal.
  2. Add your custom code to Header HTML/CSS/JS, Footer HTML/CSS/JS, or Credit card page CSS in the Customize styles section.
  3. Scroll to the bottom and click Save.
Note: For security reasons, it is not possible to make changes to the Credit Card page through _card.css. Instead, you can make CSS changes in the Credit card page CSS section within the Customer portal page (click Storefront and select Customer Portal). 

Customer portal login options

Manage how customers access the customer portal based on your preferences.

Passwordless login

Provide customers with a secure four-digit code via email or SMS and allow them to log in to the customer portal without needing to sign into their Shopify account.

See Passwordless login for more information.

Shopify Multipass

Shopify Plus merchants can use Multipass to allow customers to log in to their Shopify account with Recharge’s Passwordless Login Widget.

See Enable Multipass for more information.

Manage subscriptions after checkout setting

By default, customers access their customer portals through your Shopify storefront. Additionally, you can configure your settings to display the manage subscriptions link on the Order Status page after a customer successfully checks out.

Enable the Manage subscriptions after checkout setting

  1. Navigate to the Recharge merchant portal to enable the Manage subscriptions after checkout setting.
  2. Select Customer Portal from the Storefront drop-down menu.
  3. Find the Checkout Settings section and select Enable manage subscriptions on checkout.
    Select Enable manage subscriptions in the pop-up window to inject the manage subscriptions link into the thank you page.

Recharge automatically injects the necessary code into the Order Status page theme file to ensure the manage subscription link displays on the Order Status page.

The Manage subscriptions button is automatically available once enabled

Shopify does not provide access to the Order Status page files at the merchant level, and as such, the language displayed cannot be changed or updated.

Preview the Manage subscriptions link on the Order Status page

Review the Order Status page for an order processed after enabling the setting to see the Manage Subscription option live.

  1. Navigate to the Orders page in Shopify.
  2. Select the most recent Online Store order processed after enabling the manage subscriptions setting.
  3. Select More actions.
  4. Click View order status page to review the Manage subscription link.

Use the View order status page in Shopify to access the Manage subscriptions link

Customer portal controls

  1. Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Customer Portal.
  2. Scroll down to the Customer portal controls section to toggle the controls off or on.
  3. Toggling on allows customers to change the desired option. 
  4. Toggling off means only the storeowner can change that option.
  5. Click Save once finished.

Overview of customer portal controls

Customer portal controls allow you to limit how your customers manage their subscriptions. The following table provides a list of customer portal control settings and definitions: 

Customer portal control

Definition
Delivery schedule Customers can view future charge dates. Depending on other settings, they can also make adjustments to their order.
Force Shopify customer account logins
Note: This setting is only available if the embedded in platform storefront option is selected for stores using Shopify Checkout Integration and Recharge Checkout on Shopify. Stores must enable Passwordless login and Shopify Multipass using the Shopify Plus plan to use this feature. 

To improve the security of the customer portal, you have the option to implement enforced authentication via Shopify. Enabling this setting will prompt customers to login to their Shopify account before accessing their subscription portal. 

If set to no, customers can access the customer portal using tokenized magic links from notifications until they expire.

If set to yes, customers will be required to login to their Shopify customer accounts to access the customer portal. Magic links will be generated in notifications as above but customers will be prompted to login or create a Shopify account before accessing the portal. 

Note: To enable this setting, Shopify customer account must be enabled using the Show login link in the header of online store and at checkout checkbox.

When enabled, the ​​Get Account Access notification should be edited to remove the {{ subscription_url }} statement and link. 

If you use Quick Actions and enable this feature the customer will be prompted to log in using their Shopify customer account email and password if they choose to view the change they made in the customer portal after they process the quick action change or when using the "view customer portal" quick action. 

Stores using Theme Engine can use this feature with Base and Novum. Contact Recharge Support for the updated file information. 
Edit shipping address Customers can make updates to their shipping schedule.
Edit upcoming order date Customers can adjust their next order date.
Edit upcoming quantity Customers can adjust the number of products they receive in their next order.
Add products to subscriptions Customers can add additional products to their subscription. For example, if you are a coffee company, this would allow a whole beans customer to add a subscription for coffee filters to their account.
Change variants Customers can change the variant of the product. Using the coffee example, a customer subscribed to the Ethiopian blend could switch from whole beans to ground. 
Swap products Customers can switch their subscription product for another subscription product in your store.
Skip shipment

Customers are given the option to skip their next order. For example, if a customer is going on vacation, they could skip that month's delivery. This feature does not apply to prepaid subscriptions, only recurring charges.


Note: This must be toggled on in order for the store owner to have access to the Delivery Schedule page as well.

Edit frequency

Customers can change how often they receive a product. For example, from once a month to every two weeks. In addition, you can allow customers to choose any frequency or limit the frequency to the settings in the subscription rule. 


Note: In order for the Edit frequency to appear for customers both Edit upcoming order and Edit frequency need to be toggled on. Customers are not able to edit the frequency if they first don't have the ability to edit the date of their upcoming order.
Delivery schedule number of days in future shown Merchants can set how far ahead the upcoming subscriptions show in the customer portal. In effect, you can limit how far ahead into the future, by a certain number of days you set, a customer can set their upcoming subscription charge. This affects the upcoming orders page in the Novum customer portal.
Allow customers to input the discount code on customer portal

Storeowners can add discount codes to existing subscriptions through the merchant portal. When checked, this setting allows customers to be able to add a discount code on their end.

 

Note: If your discount code has a minimum purchase requirement, customers will not be able to apply this to existing subscriptions via their customer portal. Discounts with a minimum purchase requirement can only be redeemed at the checkout. 
Remove discounts from customer addresses after discount limit has been reached When checked, the discount code will be removed automatically from the customer account. This removal takes place the next time the upcoming subscription charge is created or regenerated. If this setting is left unchecked, discount codes will remain on file until the discount code is manually removed. 
Cancel subscription

A toggle switch that allows customers to cancel their subscription. When toggled off, customers are given the store email. When toggled on, the customer will be shown your cancellation retention options. The default for these cancellation reasons are optional.

In addition, you can specify your store email address and how many charges must be processed before the customer is allowed to cancel.

Note: If the customer is subscribed to more than one item they will be able to cancel one of their subscription items even with the cancellation charge restriction enabled. This ensures that customers are always able to modify the number of items they are subscribed to.
Reactivate subscription

Customers can reactivate their subscriptions via their customer portal.
One-time purchases You can enable or disable whether customers can add one-time products via their customer portal.

 

Note: There is a setting that when enabled Recharge will regenerate the next charge date when you or a customer updates their subscription's frequency. All stores created before October 5th, 2020 have this enabled by default, see Adjusting subscriber's charge and ship frequency. 

Additional fields

By default, customers can also view and edit the following:

  • Update the billing address
  • Securely update credit card information
  • View past orders in the purchase history section 

Access the customer portal

For detailed information on how to access the customer portal, visit Accessing the customer portal.

Instructions for your customers

If you'd like to provide your customers with documentation on how to manage their subscriptions, but do not want to link to our Recharge documents, feel free to refer to the instructions for your customers for the Recharge Checkout on Shopify or the Recharge Checkout on BigCommerce.

Stores using the Affinity customer portal theme can refer to Instructions for your customers using the Affinity customer portal theme.

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