require user registration?

I'm looking to get feedback here from you all.

Having read optimizing-conversion-rates-less-effort-more-customers/

I'm wondering whether I should require a user to register before the buy with our site? If I was to go for that method, how could I link the order to a user in the database at the checkout phase?

This is really easy to acheive.

Simply have a "customers" table in your database. When created each customer will have a unique ID.

Using Security Assist create a login page, and create a rule to password protect your checkout page so that the customer has to login to access it. With security assist authentication create a session variable to store the unique customer ID.

THen in your orders table store the customer ID as a foreign key ID - thats the link between the customer and the order. You can then create relational queries or simply queries based on the value of the customer ID to recall the order by customer.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Ian

Hi Ian,
Missed my point (I think) or I haven't understood your response.

I know I can do it creating a login page (either using security assist or DW built-in server behaviours) but I was wondering if there's a way around that and simply capture customer details at the payment stage.

You can see a solution for that in the PowerStore, which doesn't require registration.

Basically you can use it in conjunction with registration and login and use it as the registration page in the case that the user hasn't already registered.

It can get a little complex because there are so many possibilities, but it can be done with DataAssist, SecurityAssist, Validation Toolkit, and eCart. You might want to get the powerstore even as a functional example... expecially if you are going to ask how to do inventory control next ;)

how easy is it to apply my current template to powerstore. This is what I want done with my site.

The only disadvantage that I see is the shipping. Why is it only USPS. can UPS not be used at all with it?

You can apply your template.

You can also add UPS easily by applying the UPS server behavior if you own eCart. This would be much easier than trying to do the registration and other features that you would get with powerstore for free.