ACAD page vs other pages

[Red Flare]

This post probably is for module developers.
Is there a module that would allow me to have only 4 required fields in the ACAD page: 1. login, 2 email lost passwords to, 3. password, 4 confirm password. I want to make it easy to create an account without entering all the personal info. However on the OSEL screen I would like to require all the shipping/personal info to be entered. It seems that customer fields are set globally for the site.
thanks for any input

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Merchant's Customer Accounts were designed to provide a shortcut to the checkout process for returning customers, rather than for access control

While pricing and availibility groups are a by product of customer accounts - the primary function is to collect that personal information.

What other reason would there be for creating an account in an online store, if not to save the customers shipping and billing information?

[Red Flare]

You are right about collecting personal info. This has its pluses and minuses as everything else. Sometimes an ecommerce site offers percs if one registers. I plan to offer coupons etc. to people who register. In my book this should be as non intrusive as possible, like giving an email address. See here for what I consider a non intrusive registration https://www.petco.com/Secure/register.aspx?Nav=1&cm_re=080905-_-hdr-_-newuser
MIVA cart only has options to set required customer fields GLOBALLY. I want to be able to offer my customers an option to register with minimal intrusion. If they later choose to make a purchase, I want to make fields like name/address/phone number/etc. to be required on the OSEL screen.
This possibly could be done if I knew how to deal with database programming, which I don't :o
alex

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Today, many shoppers have become accustomed to presenting their shipping and billing information when registering for a site. This is nothing new.

You can still offer coupons and discounts to those that register, by presenting the offers in the the landing page after the ACAD screen is completed.

I see you're point, but do not see how relative it is to an online store. Petco is a poor example, as a large coropration, they have a MUCH larger budget for a custom shopping solution.

You could perhaps work with a PHP programmer to design an interface that would present your product line to 'registered' users, managing that registration database seperately from the MIVA Merchant store...and pre-populate the checkout screens with the information already collected.

[Red Flare]

Wouldn't it be nice to have a module which would hide all the rest of the required info on ACAD page besides email and password? While on OSEL the required fields would reappear.
Any module developer interested in creating a module, possibly a custom one?

thanks
alex

[ids]

Alex,

What version of MM are you using? You can contact me off list if you like.

Scott

[Red Flare]

I am using miva 5