What your customer sees during sign-up depends on two things you control: whether they are in your Customer List, and whether walk-up shopping is turned on for the locations they want to shop.

Before you start

A few setup choices shape what your customers experience. Handle these before you share your storefront URL.

Always required:

• A published storefront with your branding and pricing live.

Conditional:

• (If you want walk-up customers to shop without you adding them first.) Turn on walk-up shopping for the locations you want open to new buyers.
• (If you want a specific customer on preferred pricing.) Add them to your Customer List with the email they will sign up with and assign them a tier and location.

What your customer sees during sign-up

The sign-up flow is the same for every customer up to the profile step. After that, what they see depends on your settings.

1. Your customer goes to your storefront URL. They land on a Welcome screen branded with your store name and the marketing copy "Shop Smarter. Quote Faster. Order in Minutes."
2. They fill in:
3. • Email address: their work email.
   • Password: their chosen password.
4. They click Continue.
5. Stella Source sends an activation link to the email they entered. Your customer clicks the link in that email to verify the address. The activation email comes from [email protected].
6. After verifying, your customer completes their profile:
7. • First Name
   • Last Name
   • Phone Number
8. Stella Source checks the email domain against your Customer List and decides which of the four experiences below your customer sees next.

The four sign-up experiences

Use this table as a quick reference. Each row is explained in detail below.

Scenario 1: Walk-up shopping on, no match in your Customer List

Your customer fills out a short location form (company name, address, etc.) and lands in your store at default tier pricing. Use this when you want walk-up customers to be able to shop right away.

Scenario 2: Walk-up shopping on, match in your Customer List

Your customer skips the location form. Stella Source shows their assigned locations as read-only and links them to the company you already set up. They shop at the pricing tier you assigned. They can also shop at your walk-up locations at default tier pricing.

Scenario 3: Walk-up shopping off, match in your Customer List

Same read-only experience as Scenario 2, minus the walk-up locations. Your customer sees only the locations and pricing you configured for them. This is the most controlled experience.

Scenario 4: Walk-up shopping off, no match in your Customer List

Your customer sees a message that reads, "To start shopping, contact us at {Your Contact URL}," so they can finish setting up their customer account. The contact URL is the one you configured for your store. They cannot shop until you either add them to your Customer List or turn on walk-up shopping for the relevant location.

How customers get matched to your Customer List

Stella Source uses an exact email match. There is no fuzzy matching or geo-matching.

• Add your customer to your Customer List with the same email they will enter at sign-up. A typo on either side breaks the match.
• The first person from a company to sign up becomes the admin for that company. Later sign-ups from the same email domain join as regular users and do not have to fill out company info, even if they are not individually listed in your Customer List.
• Each location in your Customer List can have its own pricing tier and lead time. To give a customer access to more than one location with different pricing, add them to each location separately.

Troubleshooting

My customer says their email isn't being accepted. Sign-up requires a business email domain. Personal addresses, like Gmail or Yahoo, are blocked at the verification step. Ask your customer to use their work email. If they don't have one, you can still build a quote for them and send it through Stella Source's Build a Quote flow.

My customer got a "Contact your supplier to shop here" message. That message means two things at once: your customer's email isn't matched to your Customer List, and the location they tried to shop doesn't have walk-up shopping turned on. Either add them to your Customer List with the email they signed up with or turn on walk-up shopping for that location.

My customer is in my Customer List but still sees default pricing. Confirm two things. First, the email in your Customer List matches the one they used to sign up exactly, including the domain. Second, your customer is shopping at the location you assigned, not at a walk-up location. Default pricing on walk-up locations is expected behavior.

I want one customer to have access to multiple locations. Add them to each location separately in your Customer List. Each entry can have its own pricing tier and lead time.

My customer signed up before I added them to my Customer List. Add them now. Once you assign them to a location with a pricing tier, their next session will reflect the new pricing. If anything looks stuck, contact your CS rep.

Pro-Tips

• Set up pricing tiers before adding contacts to your Customer List. Adding contacts before tiers means you must revisit each contact to assign a tier later.
• Match emails exactly. No spaces, no aliases, same domain. The matcher does not forgive.
• Use walk-up shopping as a marketing front door. If you want your storefront URL to function as an open shop for new prospects, turn walk-up shopping on for at least one location. Customers who later end up in your Customer List will move to your preferred pricing automatically.
• Tell your customers to check spam. The activation email comes from [email protected]. If your customer says they didn't get the email, that's the first place to look.