Users

You use the Users module to enter and manage information about guest and registered users who visit your site. For example, you can change the password for registered users who have forgotten theirs. The User object profile definition is used in the Users module to collect information about users. You can use the Profile Designer to customize the User object profile definition to meet the needs of your site.

Commerce Server supports two types of users:

• Guest users. Users who do not supply personal information when visiting your Web site.
  
  
• Registered users. Users who sign up for an account on your site, and typically have a login name and password. Registered users may provide additional information in order to interact with your site in an easier, more responsive manner.

The system administrator can set Commerce Server to automatically issue cookies that identify distinct guest and registered users and associate them with user profiles in the Commerce Server database. If a user has set their system to refuse cookies, Commerce Server will assign them a globally unique identifier (GUID), which can be used to identify returning users. For information about cookies and GUIDs in Commerce Server, see Cookies and Authentication.

The system administrator imports the user data that Commerce Server collects in its database and your Web server log files into the Data Warehouse. You can then run reports based on this information to analyze the characteristics and behavior of your users. For example, you can run reports to analyze their demographic information, their product preferences, and their purchase behavior.

You can export user reports to List Manager to use as mailing lists for direct mail campaigns, and you can import user reports from List Manager into the Users module to update user information. User reports can be imported into List Manager from the Reports module, and from ASCII-delimited lists containing an e-mail address and a GUID as the first two fields for each user.

The following figure illustrates flow of user data from running a report, to exporting user data to mailing list, to updating your Web site.

Export a Static
(User) Report

Reports

List Manager

Users

Modified user
data available
on your Web site

ASCII-delimited
user list imported
into List Manager

Edit users in
user list

Import a user list
from List Manager

Exported user list
in List Manager

See Also

Importing and Exporting Lists

Importing a List of User Profiles

Editing a User

Editing Multiple Users