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Understanding the customer portal

Shopify Checkout integration BigCommerce Recharge Checkout on Shopify
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.

Customer portal types

Customer portal themes

The customer portal themes available are Novum and Prima. 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 Using the Novum customer portal theme or Using the Prima customer portal theme for more information about each theme. 

sample_customer_portal.png

Recharge Theme Engine

Recharge Theme Engine is available exclusively to merchants on the Recharge Pro Plan. 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. 

Recharge_customer_portal_user-interface_showing_the_Prima_customer_portal_theme_selected.png

Test the customer portal

  1. Select Customers in your merchant portal.
  2. Search and select the customer's name.
  3. On the customer's subscription orders page, hover over the link icon next to the customer's name. Copy and paste the link into a different browser or in an Incognito window to see the customer-facing view. 

customer_portal_link.png

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.

.rechargeapps.com_is_included_in_the_Customer_Portal_URL_when_the_URL_is_hosted_by_Recharge.png

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 Partner Directory.

  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 controls

  1. Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Customer Portal.
  2. Scroll down to the Customer portal controls section to set the controls to either Storeowner only or Storeowner and customer. 
  3. Click Save once finished. 

Overview of customer portal controls

Customer portal control

Definition
Delivery schedule Customers can view future charge dates. Depending on other settings, they can also make adjustments to their order.
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: The Storeowner and customer option must be selected in order for the store owner to have access to the Delivery Schedule page as well.

Edit frequency

(see note below)

 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 set to Storeowner and customer. 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

Allows customers to cancel their subscription. When set to Storeowner only, customers are given the store email. When set to Storeowner and customer, the customer will be shown your cancellation retention options.

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 update 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

There are three ways your customers can access their customer portal:

  1. A direct link provided by the merchant. See Access the customer portal through a direct link.
  2. A direct link accessed via their email notification. See Access the customer portal through Recharge email notifications.
  3. Logging into their Shopify or BigCommerce customer account. 

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.

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