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Wed, 01/14/2009 - 03:23
 Hi, Basically what I'm aiming for is 100% anonymous checkout, where no user account is created or required. Something like this would have been nice, but, that doesn't work with new versions. I'm just wondering if there's an up to date way of doing this? Cheers.
Re: Completely anonymous checkout (No Drupal account created)
This thread discusses it, but without a viable solution. http://www.ubercart.org/forum/support/3728/way_disable_drupal_user_accou... 
Hey guys..
I installed UC
Hey guys.. I installed UC and set it up right off the back requiring one to register before being able to checkout. Yesterday I received an email from a guy (via my website feedback form) who wants to buy product, but has yet to receive his new account confirmation email. So I checked /admin/user/user and discovered I have 161 users who have created an account but have never checked back in. WOW! So I am looking into having registration an option at checkout. Question: Can someone checkout anonymously and then later return to the site and create a new account using the same email? Thanks  
BigMike,
Ubercart does not
BigMike, Your question was: "Can someone checkout anonymously and then later return to the site and create a new account using the same email?" The short answer is no, because that account will already exist. They can come back and use their login credentials or have new credentials emailed to them.
Andy,
Yup, I understand.
One
Andy, Yup, I understand. One last question to fully understand this: Currently, when an anonymous user adds product to his cart (which is allowed) and then navigates to checkout (which is not allowed), the visitor is prompted with "You must login before you can proceed to checkout." "If you do not have an account, you can click here to create one." and then provides username and password fields. Question: How will this differ once "Enable anonymous checkout (users can checkout without logging in)." has been activated? I assume UC allows checkout and then silently creates an account with the visitor's first name and email address? (and password is sent via email) If this is true, then this sounds great to me! Because the person will still have an account created and yet can still checkout with the order. The only downside to this is if the visitor uses a phony email address, then it would just be annoying is all because the account would be there and never ever become active. hahaha Thanks
BigMike wrote:Andy,
Yup, I
Andy, Yup, I understand. One last question to fully understand this: Currently, when an anonymous user adds product to his cart (which is allowed) and then navigates to checkout (which is not allowed), the visitor is prompted with "You must login before you can proceed to checkout." "If you do not have an account, you can click here to create one." and then provides username and password fields. Question: How will this differ once "Enable anonymous checkout (users can checkout without logging in)." has been activated? I assume UC allows checkout and then silently creates an account with the visitor's first name and email address? (and password is sent via email) If this is true, then this sounds great to me! Because the person will still have an account created and yet can still checkout with the order. The only downside to this is if the visitor uses a phony email address, then it would just be annoying is all because the account would be there and never ever become active. hahaha Thanks Okay, I went ahead and enabled the option for anonymous checkout and I went through the process as a guest and it is perfect! I really like it much better this way, and it is faaaaar more friendly for our visitors! Thanks for the help, I am glad a site visitor alerted me about this problem! Mike
Re: BigMike wrote:Andy,
Yup, I
I'm struggling with this too. Is there some secret combination of settings that makes a completely anonymous or guest checkout without making accounts in the background? Thanks again!
secret combination of settings
Ralmand, the answer to your question is no. So far I think everyone who has asked about "truly anonymous" checkout has found that Ubercart's version of anonymous checkout is as good or better once they understand how it works. Ubercart has two checkout options. 1. Forced account creation: In this method a customer must have an account and be logged in to the account to checkout. If the user attempts to checkout while not logged in, Ubercart will force him to create an account or log in using an existing account before checkout. 2. Anonymous checkout: In this method a customer who is not logged in can still checkout. Ubercart uses the customer email address to determine if the customer is new or preexisting. If the customer is new (no account already exists with the same email address) then Ubercart automatically creates a new account for them, displays the user name and password on the checkout confirmation page, and (optionally) sends them an email with the account info. If the customer is returning (an account with the same email address already exists) then the customer proceeds normally through checkout, but instead of creating a new account as above, Ubercart tells them that the order info has been attached to their preexisting account. Either way, the customer does not need to know their user name or password unless they want to log in to view some order information. Either way the customer will still get emails with order status etc. . (unless the admin has disabled this feature). There are a few edge cases with anonymous checkout: 1. A customer mistypes their email address. This is really a problem for logged in or anonymous checkout, but can be more of a problem in anonymous checkout with a preexisting account. Ubercart checks to see that the email is properly formatted which will catch any gross errors. If you have your mail server configured correctly, your mail administrator will receive bounce messages for typos which do not match some valid email address and you can then manually correct the problem. If the customer enters a typo which matches some random other email address, then some random other person will receive all of that customers order info and account info emails. 2. One customer checks out with one email address the first time, and a second email address the second time. In this situation, the customer has two different accounts. This can be a problem for users purchasing roles or site access, but should not be a problem for physical / digital products. Really, this is a "dumb user" problem. The only solution is to check every anonymous order during checkout and try to match the name / address to some existing account and order, however this will probably result in false positives more often then the original issue happens. Short and sweet: If the customer is buying access to your site and can't remember to log in and can't remember what email address they used last time, then that customer needs some help in this situation, and probably in life in general. 3. There is a possibility of one customer (bad guy) tricking another customer (good guy) by coming to the site first and checking out something with the good guy's email address. Then when the good guy checks out, he "takes ownership" of the bad guys previous order. Even so, the good guys would get several emails for account creation, order status etc... I see this as being an exceedingly rare problem. That's all the edge cases I can think of for now.
Hi Andy,
I have anon checkout
Hi Andy, I have anon checkout enabled and the silent account creation has been working well so far (or so I hope). However, today I was contacted by a repeat customer who complained that they could not checkout as the email validation was failing. What was actually happening was that the checkout process was choking on the email address because it already existed in the database. Problem is that the user had no idea that this was happening as there is no validation error message telling them what's wrong. He certainly didn't realise that he needed to go and log in with silently created login details that had been appended to his order 3 months previously... In short it very nearly cost me an order and I'd hate to think this might be happening without me knowing. I think the way Ubercart handles anon checkout is pretty good - all it really lacks is some proper info being given to the user to explain the problem and give some direction on how to remedy the situation, rather than just a red border on a textbox that tells the user next to nothing. In short - if it doesn't validate, the user definitely needs telling why it doesn't validate. I am a developer, so am happy to dig in and fix this - any pointers on where to start would be much appreciated. Thanks! |
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