Customer accounts (buyer-facing)

A customer account is the signed-in area of your storefront, reached at /account. From there a shopper can view their order history, manage saved addresses, edit their profile, and see their store-credit and reward balance. Sign-in is passwordless: customers receive a one-time code (OTP) by email or SMS, so there is nothing for them to remember and nothing for you to reset.

This page covers how customers sign in, what the account area contains, and the controls you have over it — login methods, require sign-in before checkout, and inviting or enabling individual accounts.

Note

This is the buyer-facing customer account system. It is different from staff accounts, which are the logins your team uses to run the admin.

How customers sign in

Sellerlane accounts are passwordless. A shopper enters either their email or their phone number, receives a one-time code, and is signed in once they enter it — no password is ever set.

1. The customer opens /account (or clicks an account link in your theme). If they are not signed in they are sent to /account/login.

2. They enter their email or phone number, depending on which login methods your store allows.

3. Sellerlane sends a one-time verification code to that email or phone and shows the verify step.

4. They enter the code. On success they are signed in. If no customer record exists yet for that email or phone, one is created automatically at this point — so a first-time visitor and a returning customer use the exact same flow.

Codes expire and are rate-limited: after 5 failed code attempts the customer must request a new code, and repeated requests from the same address are throttled. Signing out is done from the account area and clears the session.

Caution

Because sign-in relies on a delivered code, the contact method a customer logs in with must be one your store can actually reach. Make sure transactional email is deliverable (see emails) before you rely on email login, and confirm SMS/OTP delivery is configured before you rely on phone login.

Choosing login methods

Two store-level switches decide which identifiers a customer can use to sign in:

• Email login — customers sign in with an email address.
• Phone login — customers sign in with a phone number.

Both are enabled by default. They also gate the contact method you can use at checkout, so they are validated together with your checkout settings:

• A checkout Contact method of Email only requires email login to be on.
• Phone only requires phone login to be on.
• Phone or email requires both to be on.

If a combination is inconsistent — for example require sign-in before checkout is on but no login method is enabled — Sellerlane rejects the save with an error so you cannot lock customers out by accident.

Require sign-in before checkout

By default, customers can check out as guests. Turn on Require sign-in before checkout to force every shopper to sign in (with the OTP flow above) before they can reach the payment step.

1. Go to Settings → Checkout.

2. In the Checkout behavior card, turn on Require sign-in before checkout. The helper text reads “Customers must sign in before proceeding to checkout.”

3. Click Save changes.

Tip

Requiring sign-in ties every order to a verified email or phone and a customer record, which makes order history, store credit, and segments more reliable. The trade-off is a small amount of added friction at checkout, so most stores leave it off and let shoppers check out as guests.

You can only enable this when at least one login method is on — otherwise there is no way for the customer to sign in, and the setting is rejected.

What customers see in their account

Once signed in, the account area has these sections. They are rendered by your theme, so the exact styling follows your storefront design.

Section	Path	What it shows
Dashboard	/account	Account overview with recent orders
Orders	/account/orders	Full, paginated order history; each order opens at /account/orders/{id}
Profile	/account/profile	Name and contact details
Addresses	/account/addresses	Saved addresses, with add (/new) and edit (/{id}/edit)
Rewards	/account/rewards	Store-credit balance, the store-credit ledger, and review-reward count

The Rewards page is where customers see their store-credit balance and a history (ledger) of credit they have earned or spent — including credit granted as a refund, a promotion, or a review reward. It is not a separate points program; it reflects the same store-credit account you manage from the admin. See store credit for how that balance is created and applied.

Addresses are full CRUD: a customer can add a new address, edit an existing one, and set a default — the same address book that pre-fills their checkout.

Managing accounts from the admin

Every signed-in shopper, and anyone you add manually, appears under Customers in the admin. Open a customer to manage their account. Each account has a status, shown as a badge on the customer’s page:

Status	Badge	Meaning
Enabled	green	The customer can sign in to their account
Disabled	grey	The customer cannot sign in (default for records you create)
Invited	blue	An invite has been sent and is awaiting the customer
Declined	red	The customer declined the invitation

Add a customer

1. Go to Customers and click Add customer.

2. Choose the login type — Email or Phone. The option is only available if that login method is enabled for your store; if neither is enabled you can still create a record with no login identifier.

3. Enter the email or phone, name, and any tags, notes, or marketing consent.

4. Optionally tick Send invite to email the customer an invitation to activate their account, then save.

Enable, disable, send, or resend an invite

Open the customer and use the Actions menu in the top right. The available actions depend on the current status:

• Enable Customer — turns a disabled account on so the customer can sign in. This is only available once the customer has a login identifier (an email or phone); without one the menu shows “Add login identifier to enable”.
• Disable Customer — turns an enabled account off.
• Send Invite — emails an account invitation. Available for enabled or disabled accounts that have a login identifier.
• Resend Invite — re-sends the invitation to a customer who is in the Invited state.

Note

Customers do not strictly need an invite. Because sign-in is self-serve OTP, a shopper can simply go to /account/login and verify their email or phone. The invite is a convenience — a direct prompt to activate the account.

Filter the customer list by status

On the Customers list you can filter by account status (Enabled, Disabled, Invited, Declined) alongside filters for email/phone verification, whether the customer has orders, marketing consent, tags, and tax exemption. Use this to find, for example, everyone who was invited but has not yet signed in.

Troubleshooting

• A customer says they never got the code. Codes are delivered by email or SMS. Confirm your transactional email is deliverable, check the spam folder, and have them request a fresh code (the previous one may have expired or been rate-limited after repeated attempts).
• “Email login is disabled for this store” when adding a customer. Enable email login (or pick the phone login type instead). The same applies to phone login.
• You cannot turn on require sign-in before checkout. At least one login method must be enabled first, or the setting is rejected.
• Enable Customer is greyed out. The account has no login identifier. Add an email or phone to the customer first, then enable.
• Guests are checking out without an account. That is expected unless require sign-in before checkout is on. Turn it on under Settings → Checkout to require a signed-in customer.

Next steps

Customers & segments

Organize your customer list and build self-maintaining segments.

Store credit

Manage the store-credit balances customers see on their rewards page.

Checkout settings

Tune contact method, fields, and sign-in under shipping & checkout.

Staff accounts

Manage admin logins — separate from buyer accounts — under staff accounts.