Guest Activation

In B2C shops, you may accept orders from unregistered users who have not created an account. Such guest users will provide contact details such as email and delivery address to enable fulfilment of the order, and the order details are stored in a database.

When the user at a later time decides to register and become a full-blown registered user, the Guest Activation feature uses this information to allow the user (after login) to see all their orders, including those placed before registering. Effectively, it will be just as if they had registered their account at initial checkout.

• When arriving on the registration form, the visitor is asked for their email address. The email address is then looked up to see if it was used to make any guest orders and if a guest is found, an email with an activation link is sent. The activation link contains the user's email address and the time of the request, embedded in a piece of encrypted metadata.
• When the visitor clicks the activation link, the metadata in the link is decrypted to once again expose the email address and when the link was sent. If the link is too old, the user will have to request a new link.
• The visitor is now presented with a form where they can enter a password for their new account. The password is validated against set rules and if it meets requirements, the most recent virtual "guest account" connected to the email address is modified to become a registered account, including password.
• Finally, the user is forwarded to the login screen where they can use their email address and password to log in to their new account.

There is no need to explicitly activate this behavior. It is active automatically in any shop set to accept orders from guest visitors.