How to Use Customer Groups in BigCommerce

Managing different customer segments is crucial for maximizing sales, whether you’re running a wholesale business or offering special discounts to select customers. In this video, Kal Wiggins dives into the powerful Customer Groups feature in BigCommerce, demonstrating how it can solve key business challenges and enhance your ecommerce store’s performance. Learn how to set up customer groups, create targeted discounts, manage category visibility, and even tailor content for different customer segments—all without complex external apps.

Watch the video below to unlock the full potential of Customer Groups in BigCommerce.

Why You Should Watch This Video

Customer Groups in BigCommerce provide a flexible, built-in solution for managing wholesale customers, offering exclusive discounts, and creating a more personalized shopping experience—all within your store’s core database. This video explains how to use this feature effectively, helping you avoid the need for third-party apps or complicated workarounds found on other platforms.

Kal not only covers the built-in functionality but also shows you how to take things a step further by customizing the user experience through simple code tweaks. Here’s what you’ll learn:

Key Takeaways from the Video

• Introduction to Customer Groups (00:00 – 02:41): Learn why Customer Groups are a game-changer for ecommerce businesses, especially when it comes to handling wholesale customers and retail in one unified store. Kal highlights why BigCommerce stands out from competitors like Shopify in this area.
• Plan & Pricing Details (02:41 – 04:21): Discover which BigCommerce plans offer Customer Groups and what additional features (like price lists) you can access at higher tiers, such as the Enterprise plan. Kal explains how you can still get most discounting capabilities without needing to upgrade to Enterprise.
• Discounts & Content Management (04:21 – 12:04): See how you can apply discounts by product, category, or entire store for specific customer groups. Kal demonstrates the power of controlling who sees pricing and which categories are visible to certain customer types.
• Advanced Promotions & Coupons (12:04 – 15:02): Learn how to set up automatic and coupon-based promotions for specific groups, giving you more flexibility to reward your retail or wholesale customers with targeted offers.
• Advanced Custom Code Integration (16:23 – 34:37): For those looking to push the limits, Kal shows how to use custom code in BigCommerce to dynamically show or hide content, making your store even more powerful and personalized for different customer groups.

Watch Now for Actionable Insights

By watching this video, you’ll gain practical knowledge on how to use Customer Groups in BigCommerce to grow your ecommerce business, streamline your wholesale operations, and offer a more customized shopping experience to your customers. Whether you’re new to the platform or looking to optimize your store, this video offers essential strategies to implement today.

Don’t miss out—watch the full tutorial above!

Full Transcript

Hey, you guys! Are you looking at the customer groups feature on BigCommerce and wondering if it might solve some business problems for you? Or maybe you’re considering moving to BigCommerce to use this feature for something like a wholesale system for your customers?
I get this question a lot, and I have many customers who use this feature. Honestly, the documentation out there barely scratches the surface of what it can do.
Today, I want to go over how it works, what it can do, and show you some of the built-in features, along with a bit of code near the end to highlight why this feature is so powerful.

Who Am I? (00:32)
Before we get started, my name is Kal. I’m a developer and store owner, just like you. I also run the eCommerce Growth community for store owners. Every week, I post more eCommerce videos, so if you find this helpful, make sure to subscribe and hit the bell so you don’t miss any future content!

BigCommerce Competitive Advantage (01:35)
BigCommerce’s customer groups are a huge competitive advantage over platforms like Shopify. Shopify does have apps that attempt to recreate some of this functionality, but BigCommerce’s built-in feature, being part of the core database, is far superior.
This means anything out there can interact with it, and you can choose what appears on the page using Stencil code. This is much cleaner, more performant, and better for indexing—because you’re not hiding things with JavaScript after the page loads.

BigCommerce Pricing Plans & Feature Availability (02:41)
This feature—Customer Groups—is available in the Plus plan and above (Pro and Enterprise). If you’re on the Standard plan, you’ll need to upgrade to Plus to access this.
BigCommerce reps often highlight the Price Lists feature, which is only available in Enterprise plans. Price Lists are great for setting prices on a per-product level for different customer groups, but that’s not the only way to discount products. I’ll show you how to do this even on lower-tier plans.

Customer Groups Overview (04:21)
At a high level, customer groups allow you to:
Discount products (category-wide or product-specific)
Show different content (pages, categories, menu items, etc.) to different groups
Hide/Show components (e.g., buy buttons, pricing) for specific groups
For example, you might have a site where only wholesalers can see prices and place orders, while everyone else just sees products.

Creating a Customer Group (06:01)
To create a customer group:
Go to Customers > Customer Groups in BigCommerce.
Click Create Group, and name it (e.g., “Wholesale”).
You can apply Category Discounts (e.g., 10% off a specific category), Product Discounts, or Store-wide Discounts.

Example: Discount by Customer Group (07:11)
You can easily apply a flat discount (e.g., 40% store-wide) to a customer group. If you need per-product discounts, this is where the Price Lists feature (available in Enterprise) can come in handy, especially for large inventories.

Customizing Category Access by Group (08:19)
You can also limit which categories a customer group can see:
Select a group and uncheck certain categories.
For example, Ford Transit Vans can be hidden from the default group but visible to wholesale customers.

Testing Group Functionality (09:42)
Test how customer groups work by logging in as a specific customer from the Customers tab in BigCommerce and selecting Login. This lets you see exactly what a customer in a particular group sees on your store.

Promotions & Coupons for Customer Groups (12:04)
BigCommerce offers Automatic Promotions and Coupon Promotions. With automatic promotions, discounts are applied based on rules (e.g., subtotal thresholds or customer group membership).
You can exclude or include specific customer groups when setting up promotions.
Example: Offer free shipping for retail customers who spend over $75, while excluding wholesale customers.

Price Lists for Enterprise Customers (15:02)
If you’re on Enterprise, you have access to Price Lists, where you can apply custom pricing on a per-product basis for specific customer groups. This is very useful for managing large inventories.

Code Customizations with Customer Groups (16:23)
Now let’s dive into some custom code.
First, create a copy of your theme to work on.
Use Stencil code to display content only to certain customer groups. For example, you can hide prices for non-logged-in users or show different images based on group membership.

Example: Show/Hide Content with Code (19:24)
Using if-statements in Stencil, you can conditionally show content, like images or prices, based on the customer’s group:
If the customer is in the Wholesale group, show one image.
If they are not, show a different image.
This can extend to hiding elements like buy buttons or showing a special menu for wholesale customers.

Wrap-Up (34:00)
BigCommerce’s customer groups feature is incredibly powerful, whether you’re managing wholesale, offering discounts, or simply tailoring the user experience. With built-in features like promotions, price lists, and the ability to customize with code, it’s a major advantage over competitors.

Conclusion (36:11)
Thanks for sticking around! There’s so much more you can do with customer groups, and I’ll be creating follow-up videos to go over specific use cases. Be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you plan to do with this feature.