Feature Spotlight: Customers
In the Feature Spotlight posts, we will highlight a feature in the Restrict Content Pro plugin and share a bit about why we developed the feature, who the feature is for, and how to use the feature to grow your business.
Today we will cover how you and your customers can manage their accounts.
What is a Customer?
A Customer is someone that pays the required cost in exchange for the value of one or more of the products you offer.
To understand how Customers work in Restrict Content Pro, first, we need to know a little about Membership Levels and Memberships.
A Membership Level is a product or service that is for sale on your website. When someone purchases a Membership Level, RCP creates a Customer account for them and adds a Membership associated with the purchased Membership Level to their new customer account.
In Restrict Content Pro, a Customer is someone that purchases a Membership to one or more Membership Levels.
How to Manage Customers in Restrict Content Pro
To view a list of your Customers, navigate to the Restrict Content Pro Customers menu.
In the Customer settings, you will find a list of your site’s customers sorted into rows. Each row contains 4 pieces of information related to an individual customer.
- Name – The name of the customer.
- Email – The email address associated with a customer.
- Date Registerd – The date they became a customer.
- Last Login – The date when the customer last logged in. If the Last Login date shows as Unknown, the customer likely hasn’t yet logged into the stite.
How to Edit a Customer
To view more details or make changes to a customer, hover over their name a click the Edit Customer link.
The Edit Customers page is broken down into 4 sections, Customer Details, Memberships, Recent Payments, and Notes. Let’s take a closer look at the information we will find in each of these sections.
1. Customer Details
The first section is where you find the personal information related to your customer.
- User Profile Link – Beneath the user avatar, you will find the customer’s name and a link to their WordPress User Profile page.
- Lifetime Value – The Lifetime Value is the total amount of money the customer has spent. For example, the customer above recently registered to a Membership Level that renews monthly at the cost of $10. So, next month, when their membership renews, the customer will have a lifetime value of $20.
- ID – Every WordPress user is assigned an ID number. Restrict Content Pro pulls in the WP user ID and repurposes it as the Customer ID.
- Name – The first and last name of the Customer.
- Email – The Customer’s email address.
- Customer Since – The date they became a Customer.
- Has Trialed – Whether or not the user has participated in a free trial.
- Last Login – The date when the Customer last logged in. If the Last Login date shows as Unknown, the Customer likely hasn’t yet logged into the stite.
- Email Verification – Whether or not the Customer has verified their email address.
To enable email verification, go to Restrict > Settings > Emails. Near the top, you’ll see an option for “Email Verification” with a dropdown. You can choose to enable email verification for free plans only or for all plans. - IP Address – The Customer’s IP address.
- Update Customer – If you make changes to the Customer’s name or email address you will need to click the Update Customer button to save your changes.
- Delete Customer – Deleting an account will remove the Customer’s, WP user, membership status, expiration date, and notes.
When an account is deleted, the corresponding payments are not deleted from Restrict Content Pro. However, the payments do not contain any personal information.
Deleting data from inside WordPress does not delete the user’s information in the payment gateway. For example, customer information and saved cards will not be removed from Stripe. This will have to be deleted through the payment gateway’s interface.
2. Memberships
The next section shows the Memberships associated with your customer. If the customer has registered for multiple Memberships, they will all be listed.
Each Membership row will include 4 bits of information.
- Memership – The name of the Membership Level associated with the Customer’s Membership.
- Amount – The initial and renewing cost of the the Membership.
- Status – Displays wheter or not the Membership is Active or Inactive.
- Actions – The View Details link will take you to the Membership Details page. Check out the Memberships Feature Spotlight post to learn more.
3. Recent Payments
The third section will show information related to recent payments associated with the Customer.
- ID – Every payment is assigned an ID number. Clicking the ID number will take you to a page where you can edit the payment details. We cover this in more detail in a future Feature Spotlight post.
- Date – The date the payment was recieved.
- Amount – The monetary cost of the payment.
- Status – Whether or not the payement is complete.
- Transaction ID – The ID of the transaction with the payment gateway.
- Invoice – View the Invoice for the payment.
4. Notes
Restrict Content Pro automatically generates some Customer notes. For example, looking at the screenshot below, we see that a note was auto-added to this customer after their first payment.
You can also add personal notes related to the Customer. For example, if we have any personal interaction with the Customer or make any changes associated with their account, we can leave a note that our team members or we can reference later.
How Customers Manage Their Accounts
Now that we learned how to manage our Customer accounts let’s look at how our Customers can manage their accounts. We can set up account dashboards for our customers in 3 steps.
1. Disable WordPress Toolbar
The WordPress toolbar is the menu bar at the top of the screen. The first thing we want to do is remove the WordPress toolbar for our Customers. We will be creating our own Customer Account page so that they won’t need access to any links provided in the WordPress toolbar.
You can disable the WordPress toolbar for members from the Restrict Content Pro to Restrict > Settings > Misc and select the Disable WordPress Toolbar option.
2. Set Default Account Page
Next, we need to set the default Account Page in the You can disable the WordPress toolbar for members from the Restrict Content Pro to Restrict > General settings.
Restrict Content Pro will automatically generate an Account Page for you. However, you set any page you want to be the default Account Page. For this post, we won’t change the default page. However, we are going to customize that page in the next couple of steps.
3. Configure Account & Profile Page
Restrict Content Pro has a number of shortcodes that give you the flexibility to create the site you want. The two shortcodes we are going to use for our Account Page are Subscription Details [subscription_details]
and Profile Editor [rcp_profile_editor]
.
We will cover one way to create an account page, but you can use these shortcodes to make something that works better for you and your members.
The first thing we will do on our Account Page is to add a Kadence Tab block with two tabs.
After choosing your preferred tab style, name one of your tabs Subscriptions and the other Edit Profile. Next, add a Shortcode block to each tab.
Now add the [subscription_details]
shortcode to the Subscriptions tab and
and add the [rcp_profile_editor]
to the Edit Profile tab.
The last thing we need to do is click the Update post button, and the Account Page will be ready for our customers.
What Customers See on The Account Page
Alright, let’s take a look at what our customers will see when logging visiting their Account Page.
Customer Login
Before a Customer can view their account details, they will need to log in. Adding the RCP [subscription_details]
or [rcp_profile_editor]
to a page will display a login form to anyone not currently signed into the site.
Customer Subscription Details
After logging in, our Customers log in, they will be redirected to their Account Page. Because we added the [subscription_details]
shortcode, our Customers will find information related to their Memberships on the Subscription tab.
Let’s take a closer look at what information is available is provided by the [subscription_details]
shortcode.
- Membership – The name of the Membership Level associated with the Customer’s Membership.
- Status – Displays wheter or not the Membership is Active or Inactive.
- Expiration / Renewal Date – The date the Membership will Expire or renew.
- Actions – The View Details link will take you to the Membership Details page. Check out the Memberships Feature Spotlight post to learn more.
- Invoice # – The Invoice ID numbers related to their payements
- Amount – The monetary cost of the payment.
- Payment Status – Wheter or not the payement is complete.
- Date – The date the payment was made.
- View Recepit – View a receipt of the payment.
Our Customers also have some options to manage their Memberships. We will cover everything listed in this section in more detail in future Feature Spotlight Posts.
- Enable / Disable Auto Renew – Exactly what it sounds like.
- Update Payment Method – Change the payment method associated with the Membership.
- Upgrade or Change Membership – Change the Membership Levels.
- Cancel Membership – Change the Status of their Membership to Inactive.
Customer Profile Editor
Now let’s take a look at what information is provided by the [rcp_profile_editor]
shortcode on our Edit Profile tab.
The Profile Editor allows the Customer to manage 5 aspects of their profile.
- First Name
- Last Name
- Display Name
- Email Address
- Change Password
Wrapping Up: Customers
Restrict Content Pro allows you to manage all of the important details related to your customers. Plus, the RCP shortcodes allow you to easily create a Customer Dashboard that allows your customers to make changes to their accounts without contacting you.
Don’t have a membership site?
Now is a great time to make it happen. Restrict Content Pro makes it simple for you to create your membership or subscription site. Try for free now!