Account Profiles in the User Dashboard

The Importance of a Robust User Dashboard

The account profile might seem like a mundane part of the user experience, but robust B2B account management can be a flexible and powerful part of your platform. Certainly, some businesses can get away with simpler profile needs — for instance, B2C (business-to-consumer) sites that require just a few pieces of information: name, address, and credit card information. Customers might not even have to enter that information if they are using a payment site like PayPal that relays this information for them. 

But not all account profiles are simple, especially on B2B eCommerce business platforms. A buying business’ profile can have a huge effect on how much business they will do with the selling business. Let’s take a quick overview of how important these complexities can be. 

When it comes to any sort of eCommerce business model or industry — enterprise eCommerce, marketplace eCommerce, auction eCommerce, HIPAA eCommerce, international eCommerce — there are many fundamental pieces that an end-user (I.e., customer) needs to be able to access and modify. This extends to any form of B2B eCommerce platform development, including sales portals, patients/doctor portals, customer service dashboards, and payment hubs.  

Self-service is important for the following reasons:  

• It lets customers change information as often as they need, updating payment information and addresses as needed, without a call to your customer service. 
• It allows customers to add and change information on their own schedule without the need for your customer service. 
• It lets customers add additional users and appoint permissions based on each users’ position within their company. 
• It gives customers a central location to access information regarding any orders...all without contacting customer service. 

You can see the pattern: A self-service account profile in the user dashboard gives the customer autonomy while reducing the number of time-consuming interactions with your customer service department. Letting customers take control of their information is a vital part of the self-service experience and provides value that serves both the customer and your business. 

User Profiles

It’s a given that the self-service portion of an account profile must accommodate the most basic information that’s necessary to do business with your eCommerce store. This information includes fields such as addresses, billing information, account balance and terms, and alternate shipping addresses. It will also include any information regarding any subscriptions (cost, renewal date, duration) or discounts that the customer has control over. 

As we mentioned above, user profiles in the B2B eCommerce business model need to be much more expandable than you’ll find in other models. Here are the most common situations your module should be built to handle. 

Hierarchy settings can be set up on your B2B platform for each company you’re dealing with. Hierarchical views can be expressed in any view a user deems necessary and are often designed in an easy-to-comprehend visual way.   

Such settings can set restrictions on certain users. For example, User A can purchase up to $1,000 of product a month, while User B is allowed up to $5,000. However, User B is allowed to purchase more than $5,000 if User C (their superior) steps in and approves the purchase. All of this can happen within your eCommerce framework, including the alert emails to necessary parties. 

Hierarchy is also important when dealing with confidential information; different access options can be assigned to each person from the company. Management may not want to have employees at different locations knowing what each location is spending. Restrictions may also be a legal requirement. Those who must adhere to HIPAA security best practices can only allow certain people to access any information that includes patient protected health information (PHI).

Another thing that's very important about these self-service aspects is being able to seamlessly incorporate data from a record or a master set of data; this can represent a significant percentage of the data that ends up in the customer account. This will most likely come from an ERP system or a CRM system. It could just as easily come from a spreadsheet. This means that the eCommerce portal or B2B marketplace platform needs to be able to interact with that record source and be able to push and pull information from the ERP. 

Clarity has created user dashboards for hundreds of clients, integrating flexible account profiles that match the needs of any customer that comes along. We provide the best eCommerce business solutions because we’ve been developing them for over 15 years. Get in touch with us, because we’d love to give you a demo.