Google sign-in for shoppers
Sign in with Google on your BigCommerce store
This page is about your shoppers’ sign-in, not the login to your BigCommerce control panel. Store Social Login adds a Sign in with Google button to your storefront’s sign-in, create-account and checkout pages, and the shopper ends up with a normal BigCommerce customer account.
1/6 The sign-in page opens on the ways your store offers: Google, Facebook, X, an emailed code, or the store's own email and password.
Where it appears
Where can shoppers sign in with Google on a BigCommerce store?
On the pages your theme already has for signing in, and on checkout. You choose which ones.
“BigCommerce Google login” can mean a few things. This page is about the customers who shop on your storefront. How you and your staff sign in to the BigCommerce control panel is a different login, and this app does not change it.
Store Social Login is a BigCommerce app. Once Google is switched on, its script adds the button to your storefront through BigCommerce’s Scripts API. It reads your theme’s own sign-in and create-account forms and borrows their styling, so the button sits where a shopper expects to find it. It does not rewrite your fields: the theme keeps its labels, validation and submit handler, and a store whose app is unreachable still gets a working native form.
A shopper on the create-account page, at checkout and in account settings is in a different situation each time, so each place behaves a little differently.
The create-account page
Sign up with Google
A new shopper taps the button and has an account without filling in the form, as long as Google supplies their first and last name and your registration form asks only for the core fields.
If a name is missing, or your store requires more, a short confirmation page asks for it.
The sign-in page
Sign in with Google
Offered above your theme’s own email and password form, which stays one step away. When a shopper types an address that is already connected to Google, a notice offers Google with that address filled in.
The store’s own fields stay open, so a password the account still has keeps working.
Checkout
Sign in with Google
On the customer step of BigCommerce’s Optimized One-Page Checkout. When the typed address is already connected to Google, the shopper is told so and can sign in with Google or check out as a guest. Google opens on that address, and the app refuses any other Google account for that attempt.
For an address with an ordinary password account, Google is not offered: the shopper might pick a different Google account, and signing in with the wrong one is worse than one more step.
The header account menu
From the header’s own links
Where a theme’s header has an account dropdown, the Google button goes at the top of it. Where it has only Sign in and Register links, those links open a small sign-in window with the same button, and email and password stays one click away. A shopper can sign in from any page and land back where they were. Nothing in your theme is hidden or rewritten.
Account settings
Add a faster way to sign in
A signed-in shopper with a store password can connect Google here, and keeps the password. Once connected, the card names the Google account and offers Disconnect Google, which first asks them to create a store password.
Yours to choose
Each place has its own switch in the dashboard, and a change reaches your storefront within about a minute. Leave account settings on, so shoppers can manage the connection themselves.
No duplicate accounts
How does Google sign-in connect to a customer who already has an account?
By email, and only when the match is certain.
A shopper who already has a BigCommerce account should not end up with a second one. When someone signs in with Google, Google verifies their email address and the app asks BigCommerce which customers on your storefront have it. What happens next depends on the answer.
01
The shopper taps Google
The storefront sends them straight to Google’s account page.
02
Google verifies the email
The app receives a verified email address, Google’s account ID and, when available, the shopper’s name.
03
The app asks BigCommerce
Which customers on this storefront have that address?
Then it depends on how many customers have that address
Exactly one customer has the address
Signed in as that customer
- Their orders and saved addresses are right there: it is the same BigCommerce account.
- The link is recorded, and the old password is retired at that moment.
No customer has the address
A new customer is created
- Immediately, when Google supplies a first and last name and your registration form needs only the core fields.
- Otherwise a short confirmation page asks for what is missing.
Several customers share the address
The app does not guess
- The shopper signs in with their password first.
- The app never picks one of the accounts for them.
When exactly one customer has the address, the shopper is signed in as that customer. The app records the link between their Google account and the customer, and BigCommerce starts its normal storefront session with a token from its Customer Login API, opens in a new tab. From then on it is an ordinary customer account in your store.
Why the old password is retired at that moment
When the connection is made automatically (everywhere except account settings), the customer’s existing password is retired (the app uses BigCommerce’s force_password_reset setting on the account). The reason is who can prove what. Google has just proved who owns the address, but the password on that account could have been set by anyone who registered under the address first. Retiring it means an account someone else pre-registered with that email cannot keep a working password.
The real owner keeps their account, orders and saved addresses. They sign in with Google, and they can go back to a store password from account settings, where disconnecting Google asks them to create one. A connection made from account settings, by a shopper who is already signed in, keeps their store password: only the automatic connection retires it.
When several customers share an address
If several customers on the storefront share one email address, the app does not guess which is meant. The shopper signs in with their password first.
When there is no customer yet
A new shopper gets a customer account straight away when Google supplies their first and last name and your registration form asks only for the core fields. If a name is missing, or your store requires more, a confirmation page asks for the rest.
Order history
What happens to guest orders when a shopper signs in with Google?
Orders placed as a guest under the same verified email join the account, so the history ends up in one place.
A shopper who checked out as a guest and later signs in with Google has orders in two places: the guest orders, and the account. A merchant can join them by hand in the control panel (Edit order, then Existing customer; the steps are in link guest orders to customer accounts in BigCommerce). With the dashboard switch “Attach past guest orders on Google sign-in” on, which it is by default, the app makes that same change for the shopper.
After each verified Google sign-in or correct email code, the app lists your store’s orders under the Google-verified address (the newest fifty, on your storefront channel). It moves the ones placed as a guest, or under a customer you have since deleted, to the signed-in customer.
Two rules keep it safe. An order that an existing, living account owns is never moved, whatever email it carries. And a password sign-up never attaches anything, because nothing has verified that address. The step runs after the sign-in is recorded and never fails it; whatever it could not attach waits for the shopper’s next sign-in.
It needs the Orders: Modify permission. A store that installed before the app asked for it gets it by re-approving the app’s permissions and reopening the app; until then the step does not run.
Shopper data
What does Sign in with Google share with your store?
A name, a verified email address and Google’s account identifier. Not a password, and not access to Gmail, Drive, contacts or payments.
The app asks Google for the basic profile only. With the shopper’s consent, Google provides an account identifier, a verified email address and the first and last name when they are available. The app never receives the shopper’s Google password.
What the app keeps is small. It stores a link between the shopper’s Google identity and your store’s BigCommerce customer ID, with the identifier and the email address used for matching kept as hashes. BigCommerce stays the system of record for the customer, their orders and their session. The app keeps no copy of your customers or orders and stores no store passwords. The one personal detail it holds readably is the address a shopper types to receive an emailed code, inside the email that carries the code, and the app deletes its copy of that email a week after sending it.
The full wording is in the Store Social Login privacy policy. Your own privacy policy separately governs your customer accounts, purchases and marketing.
Setting up
How to add Google sign-in to your BigCommerce store
From the merchant side it is a switch and a choice of places. No theme files are edited.
01
Request access
Store Social Login is in a private rollout, so you start by requesting access. Tell us your storefront address and, if you know it, your theme.
02
Open the app from your BigCommerce control panel
It opens inside the control panel with the access you already have, so there is no separate login to create. Approve the permissions it asks for. The store owner changes sign-in settings; authorised staff can open the dashboard.
03
Switch Google on
On Google’s page in the dashboard, the master switch puts Google in every place your theme has. Shoppers sign in through the app’s own Google client, so there is nothing to set up in Google.
04
Choose the places
The sign-in page, create-account page, checkout, header account menu and account settings each have their own switch. A change reaches your storefront within about a minute.
05
Check the theme scan
The dashboard reads your sign-in and create-account pages with the same selectors the script uses and reports, place by place, whether the form was found. The header menu is read from your sign-in page like the forms are. Checkout is drawn in the browser and account settings only for a signed-in customer, so the scan first reports them as assumed; checkout then switches to what the script sees on real checkout visits.
06
Optional: word the button and brand the Google screen
Pick “Sign in with Google” or “Continue with Google” and a theme, decide whether past guest orders are attached, and, when you want Google’s page to show your own sign-in address and, once Google has verified your brand, your store’s name, bring your own Google client.
Questions about Google sign-in
Do I need my own Google client or a Google Cloud account?
No. By default shoppers sign in through the app’s own Google client, so you can switch Google on with nothing set up in Google Cloud. The only trade-off is the name on Google’s consent screen: it shows the shared app’s name, Store Social Login, because Google has verified that app’s branding. If you want it to name your store, you can add your own client and a sign-in address on your own domain. Shoppers are sent through your client only after your test sign-in has succeeded, so a mistyped secret cannot break sign-in.
Can shoppers log in with Google on BigCommerce?
Yes. Once Google is switched on, shoppers can log in with Google on your BigCommerce sign-in, create-account and checkout pages, and they keep an ordinary BigCommerce customer account.
Does Google sign-in use a popup or a redirect?
A redirect. The storefront button asks the app to start the sign-in and the shopper is sent straight to Google’s account page, then back to your store signed in. They return to the page they started on; a shopper who started on a sign-in page lands on their account page.
What happens if Google sign-in is unavailable?
The shopper is pointed to the store’s regular sign-in, and the app has a retry page for the case where Google cannot be reached. The script never rewrites your theme’s own fields, so the native email and password form keeps working even if the app itself is unreachable. Password recovery keeps working too, and shoppers can use the email code if you have switched it on.
What does a shopper without a Google account do?
They use another way in that you have switched on: the email code, which sends a six-digit code to their address and needs no social account, or, if your store offers them, Facebook and X. They can also use their store password or check out as a guest.
Can a shopper still use a password, and can they disconnect Google?
Yes to both. The store’s own email and password form stays on the page and password recovery keeps working. A shopper whose existing account was connected automatically has had the old password retired. They can go back to a store password in account settings: disconnecting Google is there, and it asks the shopper to create a store password first. Connecting Google from account settings, while already signed in, keeps the store password.
Keep reading
- Passwordless login with a one-time email code
For shoppers with no Google account: a six-digit code by email, and how it differs from BigCommerce’s own link.
- Sign-in at BigCommerce checkout
How Google and the email code work on the customer step while Continue as guest stays.
- Link guest orders to customer accounts in BigCommerce
The steps to do it by hand in the control panel, and how sign-in does it for you.
- Show your store’s name on Google sign-in
Bring your own Google client and a sign-in address on your domain, step by step.
- What Store Social Login asks for, stores and never touches
The data Google shares, what the app keeps, and what stays in BigCommerce.
- Add social login to BigCommerce: app or custom build
What the Customer Login API, Scripts API and Optimized One-Page Checkout mean for the choice.
- Social login for BigCommerce: the overview
Every place it works, how it recognises returning customers, and what to ask any sign-in app.
Add Google sign-in to your BigCommerce store.
Store Social Login is in a private rollout, so access is by request. Tell us about your store and we will reply about getting sign-in onto your storefront.
Asking costs nothing and commits you to nothing. You will need your storefront address and, if you know it, your theme.