WooCommerce Login: What Options Your Customers Have?

WooCommerce login options are different ways for customers to register and accomplish the shopping or checkout procedure on a WooCommerce store all through the purchase or purchasing transaction.

The available login options are chosen by the buyers based on their convenience and the kind of relationship they want with the seller. All the possible WooCommerce login options that customers have are important in their own context, which we will explore in this article

From the seller’s end, there is a good need to provide the most convenient login options on their WooCommerce store, else the registration of buyers may turn into a rare chance.

But, why are logged-in buyers important?

A logged-in or registered buyer is advantageous when the seller has the intention of exclusive marketing, retargeting, loyalty program, referral programs, or increasing the lifetime value of the buyers, etc.

All these marketing possibilities are existent once the seller has the required data of the buyers, to approach through the right medium, with a targeted purpose at the right time and place.

Additionally, the registration is advantageous to the buyers in several ways too.

However, no sale must be lost out of compulsion to register or log in. And so, there is a way to purchase/checkout without creating an account; as a guest user.

In this post, I will cover all the popular login options that a WooCommerce store owner can offer to their customers. It will be a quick reference but descriptive guide on WooCommerce login.

Table Of Contents

Why Multiple WooCommerce Login Options?

As we move ahead into the article, we will discover multiple ways WooCommerce login that your customers can have.

However, the common question that comes to mind is; why are there multiple WooCommerce login options needed if all the login options ultimately end up creating a customer’s account?

First of all, keep in mind that creating an account; feeding names, email, passwords, etc. is not at all entertaining for the users. And, according to stats, about 86% of users find it a burden to create an account on a website.

So, will you take the risk by making it compulsory to register for purchases?

If yes? You’re gonna lose a good amount of shoppers.

But, you can’t afford to have all the buyers purchasing without registering!

You still want buyers to register to your online store, but the expert marketer points out that first, you need to win their trust before your customer gets on the boat with you. In short, different shoppers have different needs while creating an account on your WooCommerce store, and one way can’t incorporate all the needs or convenience. Hence, the varied login options make it possible to give choices to the users for WooCommerce login.

In straight words—you want all your shoppers; those who are ready to create their account, and also those who don’t, to purchase whatever products they like in your store.

It’s all about stretching the possibilities and letting no shoppers go without purchasing.

Possible WooCommerce Login Options

Different individuals have a different set of needs gives rise to five different types of WooCommerce login options.

In this section, we will learn about each of them in detail; what it means, how to implement it in your WooCommerce store, and its benefits and drawbacks.

The popular WooCommerce login options are:

1. Checkout As Guest Users
2. Login With Email Or UserId On The Public Store
3. Private Store Login
4. Log In With The Social Account
5. Auto-Login URL

Let’s dive into each of them:

1. Checkout As Guest Users

Purchasing as a guest user is a flexible way to checkout on a store without any compulsory condition to create a user account or log in to the store.

This option is mostly preferred by buyers who are not so frequent in purchasing in certain stores or are new to a store or by those who first want to experience shopping with a particular store. And, once they are acquainted and satisfied with the shopping process, they proceed with the account creation.

The below example of Nike shoes, shows the checkout page of Nike, where they have clearly given the guest checkout option along with normal checkout.

During the guest checkout process, the shopper purchases anonymously. However, buyers still need to provide a good amount of information while checking out as guests for shipping, payment, notification-related communication, etc.

But, all the pieces of information provided by the customer are used one time; for the particular order. This data is not used for future marketing, personalization, or re-targeting purposes.

From the seller’s end, the guest checkout process has two main purposes;

• No sale must be lost just because buyers aren’t ready to create the account just yet
• To get users acquainted with the shopping experience

Benefits:

1. Buyers can purchase without creating an account
2. The account holder need not remember the username and password.
3. Buyers receive promotional messages in the future.

Drawbacks:

1. Customers have to enter all the details every time they checkout
2. No order history
3. No track of customer buying behavior
4. The seller cannot use the available data for personalizing the shopping experience, or for marketing purposes.

How to add the guest checkout login method, set it in the WordPress backend? Trust us, it is simple and easy. Follow the simple and easy steps mentioned below:

Click WooCommerce > Setting > Accounts and Privacy > Check Mark the Guest Checkout.

You can also look at this self-explanatory picture and become a Guest User in no time.

2. Login With An Email Or User ID On Public Store

Those online stores in which visitors can navigate and view products but cannot checkout without having a verified store account comes in this category.

This is a popular WooCommerce login option, and almost all the online stores use this, as it is the most fundamental way, where the buyers and the seller get equal benefits, with minimal shares of data between each other.

Here’s an example of the Godin Guitar store; existing users can log in (left) while new users can create a new account with the register option(right).

In this option, users need to enter their email address (sometimes phone number) and a password that they want to go with. After clicking on the register or sign-up button, they also need to verify the respective email address that they have entered.

Later, after registering, users need to provide other information such as their name, address, payment details, etc. to complete the account.

Benefits:

1. Sellers get the advantage of personalizing the shopping experience with the available data for the users.
2. Buyers get personalized recommendations of products and services, hence they don’t have to spend time searching for matching products.
3. The checkout process turns faster

Drawbacks:

1. Customers need to remember or keep the username and password saved for future login
2. Registration or creating an account time-consuming process.

To add a login and signup option to your WooCommerce store, all you have to do is check the account creation option available in the WooCommerce menu in the WordPress dashboard.

Click WooCommerce > Setting > Accounts and Privacy > Check Mark the Account Creation option.

3. Password Protected Products & Categories

Password-protected stores are those in which the existing products can be accessed only if the buyers have the password.

WooCommerce provides the option to make individual products or categories of products password protected. Admin just needs to set the password for the products or the categories.

Buyers can view the product only if they have the password.

After the shopper enters the password, they can easily view the product, and carry out normal shopping.

Password-protected login is used when products are meaningful to specific categories of audience and irrelevant to all other store visitors.

For example, in a store that sells uniforms to a particular organization, the products are not meaningful to the customer that does not belong to that organization. Therefore, with the password-protected login option, administrators can let only that organization view the products.

Commonly, the default WordPress feature allows you to set only one password per product page. What if you want to go with multiple passwords for each protected page? Don’t worry, PPWP Pro can give you a hand. This plugin can even grant you a function to protect your entire WooCommerce shop and product categories with ease”.

4. WooCommerce Login With Social Account

The social login option is a trending option to register and create store accounts.

Almost everyone is on one or more social media platforms, and providing WooCommerce login with social media makes it easy for the buyers to immediately log in to your WooCommerce store in just one click.

One reason why social login is trending is that it’s turning into a new normal

WooCommerce store owners can provide multiple social-media options for WooCommerce users to log in such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, etc. and, whatever the user chooses, the login process proceeds automatically in just one click.

Here’s an example:

When a visitor clicks on any of the social media to continue the account setup process, the API attached to the login page requests details of the selected social media for details of the person. After the details are extracted,  the users will confirm to proceed with extracted data, the account is automatically created with all the details that are available on that respective social media account.

Here are the top social media, popularly used for Social Login.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google
• Instagram

Social login is more used in B2C than B2B business.

Benefits:

1. This particular login process is my favorite because it is fast.
2. Users need not remember their username or password.
3. Personalized shopping experience and better targeting on social media.
4. Extra security. This enables the user’s complete security
5. Rich user profile: As social accounts have several other information such as location, gender, date of birth, image, email, etc., hence WooCommerce accounts created using social login naturally have more user data than the other ways.

Source: CXL

5. Auto-Login URL For Private Store

You can create a private WooCommerce store using the auto-login URL method.

In this login method, the user/buyer can access a store only if they have a special URL provided by the admin. The buyer never needs to remember the store username and password. Private WooCommerce stores are used to sell premium content such as online courses. The buyers once fulfill the required criteria, the seller provides the auto-login link, and using that link, buyers instantly log in without going through any other intermediate process.

If you wish to create such a WooCommerce login option for your online store, you would need a plugin.

Here’s what I recommend: Auto-Login Links.

NOTE:

The autologin plugin bypasses the existing standard WooCommerce authentication process and gives designated access to the buyers by just one link. Imagine! Therefore, the admin needs to be careful to use it.

The installation and configuration process is simple and quick. After the installation, you can simply add new users and generate the auto-link URL, (and delete as well), all in the user’s sections.

After creating users and generating the auto-login URL, simply share the respective link with that person.

Benefits:

1. Improves security of the buyer’s account
2. Buyers don’t require to remember any passwords or usernames
3. Sellers can also make the WooCommerce store private and sell premium products as per their requirements.

Drawbacks:

1. Merchants need to maintain and provide URLs to the buyers

Conclusion

The seller wants most of the buyers to register.

Having more and more registered users to your WooCommerce store is very beneficial to your business, but not all buyers are ready to trust in the first instant. Furthermore, some login methods are time-saving over the standard login process which the buyers usually prefer.

Therefore, keeping all the buyers in mind, multiple WooCommerce login methods exist that we have gone through in detail in the article above. Building a perfect login or signup process is really important for all WooCommerce stores. Because, later on, this sign-up information can result to be fruitful in other marketing assessment processes that are carried forward.

And, hence sellers need to have good knowledge of all the available options. This knowledge will also be useful in preventing any login issues.

I hope with this article I have achieved my goal of providing a good knowledge base on WooCommerce login. And, if there are any other questions in your mind, shoot in the comment.

Thanks for reading! :)