I was just wondering what the situation was regarding customer accounts for ecommerce, as this is still in “backlog” status but is a critical feature for ecommerce ?
The problem for me - which might be different for others in other countries - is that I simply can’t get sell the Webflow ecommerce shop to businesses if it doesn’t have a customer account function… In France in particular there are loads of legal constrain around RGPD, data protection, transparency of sales contract, capacity for a customer to track it’s order, cancellation policies, etc. All of which is close to impossible to handle without a customer account functionality…
I’ve even lost a customer last week (doing over €150k sales online a year, which for a small business is pretty good…) because this functionality was missing and they wanted a supplier running both the marketing and tech alongside.
I know now Webflow doesn’t like to share roadmap timelines, which I understand is convenient as it avoids backlash if your dev takes longer than expected, but without this being sorted as a priority, I can’t see Webflow ecommerce getting any traction…
oh wow…didn’t realize customer accounts was in backlog. i assumed it was in planning or development. that is really disappointing. everytime i think i am closer to being able to use webflow e-commerce instead of shopify, i realize it likely won’t happen anytime soon
This is quite concerning, I told my client 2 days ago, customer accounts will arrive sooner so there’s no need to go with foxy or snipcart.
So next jobs, I guess I’ll have to go with Wordpress unless there’s a webflow workaround for ecom customer accounts. And I hate Wordpress for now but that might change.
Congrats on the other achievements but EU countries really need this one.
I think a lot of agencies wouldn’t mind to crowd fund some Webflow features even though we are already invested through Pro accounts. If we could get peace of mind quicker.
At this day I would list my top priorities as such:
1 - Customer accounts
2- Multilingual
3- Coupon codes
4- CMS gallery/lightbox
5- Better control of URL structure
Josh from Foxy here. We’ve got customer portal functionality that works with platforms like Webflow coming this quarter. Access order history, manage subscriptions, and more.
More info about integrating Foxy with Webflow can be found here: Webflow | Foxy.io Please let us know if we can be of assistance. We’re more than happy to hop on a call, put together demos, etc, all free of charge.
I suspect the reason for this is that Webflow want to introduce a user portal across the board, not just for Ecommerce, which will take some planning. It would make more sense to do both at the same time as some of the infrastructure behind it will support both. Granted, it’s a pretty essential feature for customers to be able to open up an account, track order history, status and so on…
As for losing a client who’s turning over €150k a year @Pasint, due to Webflow not having this kind of functionality, you could probably do with rethinking your business strategy… Or just send them this way ;).
Hi @JoeMillion,
I agree with you on all those points. It does make sense to do this across the board directly, and I’m sure once it’s there, it will be good. the quality of Webflow’s release is always excellent.
But for now, Webflow ecommerce can’t be used as is, at least in France, where customers must be able to access there data, invoices and order history.
And yes, I am rethinking my business strategy and I’ve made new platform partnerships for that. Gotta keep the customers happy
Hi @parkerwest.
It’s not ready yet, but we’re making good progress. Rest assured that the Webflow community will be one of the first to know when it’s ready.
@Quin_Wu I think your status update question was for Webflow Ecommerce, but for anyone who is interested, we’re looking for beta testers for our new customer portal feature for Webflow: Foxy Beta Access
I agree with everyone here that user accounts are important but not necessarily essential for a successful online store - as usual, it all depends on the business.
For example, we have launched a £1M+ website for a client here in the UK without accounts being enabled (in a Shopify Plus store) and both the new and existing customers were totally fine about it. Very few people complained about not being able to login and check the status of their order which is one of the main issues people raise, as long as they were receiving the necessary order update emails at each stage of the fulfilment process.
Secondly, “contact preferences management” can be a pain when you don’t have a single account to refer to but again, in Shopify at least, any contact preferences like the newsletter signup opt-ins are recorded against every order so if you need to know if you can email someone, check the last order and data therein and cross-check with the email subscriber list. Obviously we automated preference syncing between platforms but it’s not as easy as having that login account and forcing it to be used I grant you.
Do remember Guest Checkouts too in all this i.e. we encourage clients to enable this feature even if the customer has a login account which can still cause issues around contact preferences management. However, we believe that it is all about giving the customer the experience they want at that moment in time for maximising the conversion rate and it is up to us as the ecommerce solutions provider to help our clients manage the data and processes behind the scenes.
But as I say, it depends on the business and every project is different. I’m keen to see where this all leads but as others have said here, Webflow tends to get it right with their releases so when it does arrive, we’ll all be happy!
I agree with your points @GlennAtTheFlow , especially that it’s all customer specific and that Webflow will get it right when they do it (but they need to do it).
As I mentionned, in France, it’s a legal requirement for ecommerce sites to give customers access to their order details, and for that you need a customer account functionality. Webflow not having it is thus a showstopper for this country…
Interesting… out of curiosity @Pasint does your law say that the customer needs a login account specifically or that they just need access to order details? Just a point of clarification really because if they could access their order details (page) via a link in an email you send them as the merchant, would that be enough?
I know that other ecom platform providers do this on guest checkout purchases using a suitably complicated URL but I’m not sure Webflow does as yet. It looks as though the Order Confirmation email that goes out does not contain a link at least. I’ll look into this one deeper anyway as I’m interested.
