How to link guest orders to customer accounts in BigCommerce

Why a guest order matters after the sale

BigCommerce supports guest checkout. The trade-off is that nothing ties a guest order to a customer. When you link a guest order to an account, BigCommerce’s guest checkout article, opens in a new tab says the customer can view it in their order history, along with order messages, reordering and return requests. Until then, a returning shopper opens their account and finds nothing.

For the merchant it is the same gap from the other side: a repeat customer whose earlier orders sit under a guest record has no order history in their account, and nothing in your customer records connects those purchases to them.

How to find guest orders that probably belong to a customer

In the BigCommerce control panel, BigCommerce gives you two ways to spot them:

• Go to Orders then Search, tick Guests who may be customers, and click Search.
• On the View Orders page, look for the chain icon beside the Action menu. It marks a guest order placed with the same email as an existing account.

The icon is only a flag for a potential match. Whether the order really belongs to that customer is your call.

How to link a guest order by hand

1. On the order’s View page, open the Action menu and choose Edit order.
2. In Customer information, change the Order for toggle from New customer to Existing customer.
3. Search by name, email address or company name, and select the customer.
4. Click Next until you reach the Payment step, then click Save.

These are the steps as BigCommerce documents them; menu labels can change, so check them against your control panel.

Where doing it by hand stops working

It is one order at a time, it needs someone to decide each match, and it happens after the fact. The more guest orders a store takes, the more of that work there is, and a shopper who comes back before anyone has linked their order finds an empty history.

Linking guest orders when a shopper signs in

Store Social Login makes the same change at the one moment there is proof: a verified sign-in. Once the shopper has signed in with Google, or confirmed their address with an emailed code, the app looks up the orders placed under that verified email and attaches the ones that no account owns. It is the same change as Edit order then Existing customer, made for you.

The rules are deliberately narrow, and worth knowing before you switch it on:

• Only unowned orders move. Guest orders, and orders whose customer record the store has since deleted. An order a living account owns is never touched, whatever its email says.
• Only the verified address counts. Orders under another email address stay where they are. A password sign-up attaches nothing, because nothing has verified the address.
• It never gets in the way of signing in. If an order cannot be attached, the shopper still signs in, and the rest wait for the next verified sign-in.
• It needs a permission. The app has to hold the “Orders: Modify” permission, which existing stores grant by re-authorising it, and the dashboard switch for attaching past guest orders, which is on by default.
• It looks at recent storefront orders. The app lists the newest fifty orders under the verified address, from your storefront channel.

A short checklist for your store

1. Decide whether you want guests to be invited to create an account after ordering. BigCommerce’s Customer accounts setting (Settings, Checkout, General settings) offers guest checkout, guest checkout with accounts created after ordering, or accounts required.
2. Link any old guest orders you care about by hand, starting with your best repeat customers.
3. Offer a sign-in that proves the email, so new and returning shoppers link themselves.

Store Social Login is in a private rollout. If linking guest orders is the reason you are here, request access and say so.