Mercato

Customer portal

Mercato → Settings → Customer portal. Your customers sign in on your store's website and see their own account: their orders, invoices, quotes, bookings, subscriptions, gift card balances, their details and their email preferences. It works on websites built in VeraGen: an Online store or a Client portal made in Chimp, on its name.veragen.app address, its previews, and your own domain once it is live.

The customer portal is off until you switch it on.

Switch it on

Open Mercato → Settings (owners and admins). For a Client portal, open Mercato in the same project: the store is there from the portal's first build.
Under Customer portal, tick Customers can sign in on the store’s website and see their account.
Tick what customers can see and do (see below).
Choose Save settings.

The website's My account page starts answering straight away. Chimp builds that page into every online store, and into a client portal while Mercato is on. If your website has none, ask for one in Chimp → Build → Ask for a change….

There are no passwords. On the website's My account page the customer types their email, and gets an email from your store with a sign-in link and a 6-digit code. The link opens your website already signed in; the code can be typed instead. Each works once, for 15 minutes. Asking again sends another email and the earlier one keeps working until it expires. A code is checked against the two newest emails. Five wrong codes end that code, but never the link in the same email: the sign-in page then says Too many tries. Use the link in the email, or ask for a new one. Nobody can lock a customer out by typing wrong codes or asking for their email.

Only your customers can sign in: someone who bought, booked, subscribed or was sent an invoice or quote by this store. If Thrive holds two contacts with the same email, the customer sees everything at this store under either of them. The website gives everyone the same answer ("If this email has an account, we've emailed a link"), so it never tells anyone who your customers are, and nobody else is sent an email. Signing in never adds anyone to Thrive.

A customer stays signed in on that browser for up to 14 days, or until they have not visited for 3 days, or until they sign out.

What customers can see and do

Setting	What the customer gets
Orders, with their status and tracking numbers	Every order of theirs from this store, what is in it, what they paid, and the tracking numbers you added.
Invoices (paid on the invoice’s pay page)	Invoices you sent them, open and paid. Paying opens the same pay page as the invoice email. Drafts are never shown.
Quotes, and accepting them	Quotes you sent them. Accepting works exactly like accepting from the quote email.
Bookings (moving and cancelling follow the booking rules above)	Their bookings. They can move or cancel one only as Settings → Bookings allows: before the cut-off, and moving only if Customers may move their own booking is ticked.
Subscriptions (the card is changed on the subscription’s own page)	Their subscriptions and when the next payment is. Changing the card opens the subscription's own page.
Customers can cancel their own subscription	Off unless you tick it. When on, cancelling ends the subscription at the end of the period already paid for, as the subscription's own page does.
Gift card balances	Their gift cards and what is left on each, when your store has gift cards.
Edit their name, phone and address	They can change their name, phone and address. Their email is how they sign in, so they ask you to change it.

Setting

What the customer gets

Orders, with their status and tracking numbers

Every order of theirs from this store, what is in it, what they paid, and the tracking numbers you added.

Invoices (paid on the invoice’s pay page)

Invoices you sent them, open and paid. Paying opens the same pay page as the invoice email. Drafts are never shown.

Quotes, and accepting them

Quotes you sent them. Accepting works exactly like accepting from the quote email.

Bookings (moving and cancelling follow the booking rules above)

Their bookings. They can move or cancel one only as Settings → Bookings allows: before the cut-off, and moving only if Customers may move their own booking is ticked.

Subscriptions (the card is changed on the subscription’s own page)

Their subscriptions and when the next payment is. Changing the card opens the subscription's own page.

Customers can cancel their own subscription

Off unless you tick it. When on, cancelling ends the subscription at the end of the period already paid for, as the subscription's own page does.

Gift card balances

Their gift cards and what is left on each, when your store has gift cards.

Edit their name, phone and address

They can change their name, phone and address. Their email is how they sign in, so they ask you to change it.

Untick something and it disappears from the website's My account page at once.

Email preferences

Every signed-in customer can stop your emails from their account. That marks them Email opt-out in Thrive and adds them to the list your automated emails never go to; the change is on their Thrive timeline. Imports and the API never turn it back on. The customer can, by choosing to get emails again and confirming it, but only where they turned emails off themselves: on your website, with an email's unsubscribe link, or from a newsletter. That lifts those, across your account, and Thrive records that they did it themselves on your website. An opt-out you set (in Thrive, by an import or through the API), an address that bounced, a spam report, or a contact you marked Do not contact is never lifted from the website: their account says your store has turned emails off for that address and that they should contact you, with no button to press. You can lift it yourself in Thrive.

What a customer can never see

Another customer's anything, another store's orders (even a store in the same VeraGen account), your notes on an order, or anything you have not sent them. Each sign-in belongs to one store.

Ending access

Untick Customers can sign in on the store’s website and see their account: no customer can see their account from that moment.
Revoke the website's store key in Sales channels: the portal stops with it.
Archive a contact in Thrive: that person is signed out and cannot sign in again.

If something goes wrong

What you see	What to do
Customer accounts are not switched on for this store.	Switch it on in Settings → Customer portal.
Customer accounts are not available on this website.	The portal works on websites built in VeraGen. A website you connected yourself in Sales channels with Add a website cannot show it.
A customer says no email arrived	Check the email is the one on their orders or invoices, and their spam folder, then ask them to try again. Up to three sign-in emails an hour are sent to one address when asked from the same place, and up to 20 in all.
That link or code is not right, or it has expired.	The link was already used or is more than 15 minutes old, or five wrong codes were typed (the link in that email still works). Ask for a new one.
Too many tries. Use the link in the email, or ask for a new one.	Five wrong codes were typed for that email. The link in the email still works.

What you see

What to do

Customer accounts are not switched on for this store.

Switch it on in Settings → Customer portal.

Customer accounts are not available on this website.

The portal works on websites built in VeraGen. A website you connected yourself in Sales channels with Add a website cannot show it.

A customer says no email arrived

Check the email is the one on their orders or invoices, and their spam folder, then ask them to try again. Up to three sign-in emails an hour are sent to one address when asked from the same place, and up to 20 in all.

That link or code is not right, or it has expired.

The link was already used or is more than 15 minutes old, or five wrong codes were typed (the link in that email still works). Ask for a new one.

Too many tries. Use the link in the email, or ask for a new one.

Five wrong codes were typed for that email. The link in the email still works.