Customer Groups for B2C and B2B Segmentation

Customer management can be complex, especially if your online store serves more than one type of customer simultaneously — such as both B2B wholesale customers and regular B2C customers. Or maybe you want to build a membership system, in which customers can advance through tiers and gain access to special discounts or limited products. You may have a vision for your business model that relies heavily on being able to split up your customers in this fashion.

Shift4Shop has a built-in Customer Groups feature that allows you to categorize your customers as you see fit. Assign different pricing levels to different groups, send group-exclusive email newsletters, hide products or whole categories from certain groups, and more. With Shift4Shop, you’ll have all the flexibility you need to build your customer base as you’ve envisioned.

With Customer Groups you can:

  • Create configurable Customer Groups to offer different pricing levels and purchase limits to different segments of your customer base
  • Hide products or categories from certain Customer Groups, create wholesale pricing for a chosen group, and more
  • Send different email newsletters to different Customer Groups to specialize your marketing

Watch how the Customer Groups feature works 

 

Shift4Shop’s Customer Groups Gallery

Customer Groups Frequently Asked Questions

  • If I want to restrict some purchases to certain groups, do I have to hide the product completely or can I just make it non-purchasable to groups that don’t qualify?

When designating a product as off-limits to a group, you have a choice as to whether to hide the item or simply to hide the purchase button. In some “customer tier”-type systems, this provides the advantage of showing customers what they can access in the future, creating incentive to move up to the next level of membership.

  • Can I use Customer Groups to handle tax-exempt customers?

Yes! In fact, this is built in. You’ll simply need to select the “Non-Taxable” option when editing the desired customer group.

  • Can customers add themselves to a group?

If you want to allow customers to choose their group, you’ll need to select “Allow Registration” in the group options. You’ll have an additional option to “Auto-Approve” or to require you to manually activate their accounts.

 

What customers are saying about our Customer Groups feature

“I wanted to create a retail website with a tiered membership system and 3dcart’s Customer Groups lets me do just that. I set it up so I can move customers up the ranks for being loyal and frequent purchasers. I also do some sales B2B so I was able to set up a group for that as well, without getting in the way of my consumer-based membership system. The Customer Groups module is versatile enough for the complex needs of
my business.”

May 14, 2018