checkout as unregistered guest and "modify" in Checkout Options

[Claudia Filos]

We are exploring store/event setup in a sandbox.

In the cart, when the patron clicks on the Proceed to Checkout button, it takes them to a new page with with a few sections. The top section is Checkout Options. In that section is a "modify" link that allows patrons to choose if they want to Order as a guest or Sign In. Is it possible to make Checkout Options fully visible as a default, without patrons having to click the cryptic modify link? (see attached screen shot)


Also, is it possible to allow patrons to checkout as unregistered guests? I do this on other websites all the time.

Thank you!

[Claudia Filos]

Also, we are testing our first store, and it looks like the default situation is that customers need to register for the patron portal and then their registration needs to be approved. That's not a great customer experience for our patrons. Is there a way to make it so that patrons don't need to be approved? We would lose many of our customers if they need to wait to be approved before completing a purchase.

[CnP.Support]

Good day claude

We understand your issue but please note that for protecting against attacks on your store we have to make sure the customer is validated. If we remove this, I assure you with 200% confidence, that your store will be attacked for credit card validation and bogus orders.

Amazon and almost all major online stores require registration since orders need to be shipped.

We are considering adding a feature that you can bypass this if you accept 100% responsibility for fraud and attacks.

Please consider your security first. In the absence of bad actors design would be so much easier.. but sites and forms are constantly under attack.

Hope that helps with the rational behind the design.

[Claudia Filos]

Finally, is there a document or video that walks admins through the multiple steps of setting up Click & Pay Suite? I'm not talking about the high level demos showing the new functions of C&PS. I mean step by step guidance for setting up each section and the ideal order for doing so. All the guidance seems to be mostly descriptions of fields. Or is very basic. For instance, so far as I can tell, this is guidance for the Patron Portal. So sorry if I'm missing something obvious. Thanks so much!!


PATRON PORTAL

Portal Menu Items


Select menu items that will be visible in the Patron Portal. Permissions


Turn on permissions for updates that patrons may update.

[Claudia Filos]

Thanks so much for your response about customer validation. I really appreciate your time.
When you say customer "validation", do you mean they need to create an account as a patron or they need to be approved as a registered patron? Or both?
I guess I'm confused because we have been using Click and Pledge and Click and Pledge Event Management for years and our customers haven't needed to do this. Why is this different?

[CnP.Support]

There are a couple of major differences between a store & event.

In the Store there are products that need to be shipped. Robots attack these forms and place orders - if you look at the likes of Amazon, your credit card is ONLY pinged when the order is shipped and NOT when the order is placed. This is simply because you cannot charge a card prior to shipping the product but also for security.

In our system Donations are processed in real time and as such forms are constantly under attack for validation. If you have not experienced these attacks you are among the very rare nonprofits that has not seen this. In the CONNECT platform we have protection against this and check every aspect of the transaction. The CONNECT pages are on our servers and as such we have a lot more freedom on what we can do. With Salesforce we do not have a lot of flexibility we have with our own platforms. So far, hopefully is old news.. and nothing new.

The EVENT management system in release 9.x is also under major attack and while in the past multi-step forms were being ignored by fraudsters, now their attention has turned towards these forms. Event forms are being attacked with thousands of transactions posting to it for validation - again because we validate credit cards and authorize / decline in real time. In an upcoming release we are adding reCaptcha version 3.x to the event, store, patron portal, and all public facing forms.

To give you an idea, a client recently went through thousands of bogus patron registrations. It is a nasty world out there.. we just try to protect you. To us is more work.. we gain zero from adding all these features.. we lose time in developing better features but we feel our major responsibility, first and foremost, is to protect our clients and their patrons.

[CnP.Support.AM]

Claudia Filos

Regarding the Checkout Options, we have already addressed this issue in our beta version. We have scheduled the release for next week in which the Checkout Options will be visible to the patrons by default.

Please note that you do not need to manually approve the patron registrations. We have an option in Customer Groups where you can set it to automatically approve the patrons: