Customer access

On this page, discover how to change customer access for different products and parts of your site.

You can use Wholesale Gorilla to hide certain products or pages from retail or wholesale customers. Hidden products and pages will not be shown on collection pages, search, etc. for the specified customer group.

Product exclusion and locked pages settings can be found by going to the app homepage, clicking on Customers, and scrolling down to Customer Access.

Wholesale customers are defined by tagged accounts associated with Wholesale Gorilla discount tags. Discounts and access rules are also based on those tags.

Product exclusions

Retail exclusions

If you would like to hide products from retail customers, add the tag wholesale-only to the product’s tags Adding the tag wholesale-only to your product listings will ensure that only customers who are logged in with a valid wholesale account can locate these items within your site.

This tag has a lowercase “w” and a dash between the words “wholesale” and “only”. This tag will not work if the w is uppercase or if the dash is removed - it must be exactly as shown above.

• These pages will no longer be indexed by search engines such as Google, so searching this product won’t return any results.

Search engines can take up to a couple days to re-index a page that already exists, so if you add the tag to an existing product the page may still appear in searches for several days.

• If a wholesale customer has wholesale-only products in their cart and they log out of their account they will be prompted to either log in again, or to remove the wholesale-only items from their cart in order to continue shopping.
• If a non-customer is able to visit a wholesale-only product page they will be redirected to a page asking them to log in to view the product.

You must have at least one active wholesale price rule set up in order for this setting to work.

Wholesale exclusions

You can use product tags to hide products from wholesale customers.  These products will not appear on collection or search pages, and wholesale customers will not be able to check out if one of these products is in their cart.

Setting up product exclusions

1. Open your Wholesale Gorilla app dashboard and click on the ‘Exclusions & Locks’ tab.
2. Under the ‘Product Exclusions’ section find the section called Wholesale Exclusions. 
3. Set a wholesale exclusion product tag.  Enter at least one tag (or multiple tags separated by commas) into this field and click ‘Save’.
4. These tags will be your wholesale exclusion tags, and will need to be applied to all products that you wish to hide from wholesale customers

Retail exclusive tags can not contain the word ‘wholesale’ since we use that in the wholesale-only tag; please select a different tag to use which doesn’t contain the word ‘wholesale’ if you encounter issues in saving this tag in these settings.

Adding tags to a product in your Shopify admin

• Go into your Shopify dashboard and click the ‘Products’ tab.
• Find the product you would like to hide from wholesale customers and open the listing for editing.
• Scroll to its ‘Tags’ subsection.  Enter the tag into this field and click ‘Save’.

You have now successfully hidden this product from logged in wholesale customers!

Important Notes

Customers must be wholesale customers.

All wholesale functions in Wholesale Gorilla only run for customers that have a tag that matches a wholesale price rule set in the Discounts page. So if you want to set a Customer Specific Exclusion for a given customer, they must also have a wholesale price rule associated with their account.

You can give customers multiple customer tags.

The product tags you set for Customer Specific Exclusions can be different from the tags you use to set wholesale discounts.  Here's an example:

• You set a wholesale price rule: "Customers with the tag wholesale get 50% off the Entire Store.
• You set a customer specific exclusion: "Product A is not visible to customers tagged hideA".
• Wholesale customer John is tagged wholesale - he can see Product A and gets 50% off the Entire store.
• Wholesale Customer Jane is tagged wholesale and hideA - she can not see Product A, but still gets 50% off the rest of the store.

Customer specific exclusions work with wholesale exclusions.

If you set product tags in the wholesale exclusions section, these will be enforced in addition to customer specific exclusions. For example if you set a wholesale exclusion tag of ‘exclude’, products with this tag will be hidden from all wholesale customers, regardless of any Customer Specific Exclusions you create.

Customer specific exclusions work with the ‘wholesale-only’ tag.

If you want to hide a product from retail customers, you need to add the tag wholesale-only to the product. Setting a Customer Specific Exclusion will not automatically hide the product from retail customers.

• Customers must be wholesale customers. All wholesale functions in Wholesale Gorilla only run for customers that have a tag that matches a wholesale price rule set in the Discounts page. So if you want to set a Customer Specific Exclusion for a given customer, they must also have a wholesale price rule associated with their account.
• You can give customers multiple customer tags. The product tags you set for Customer Specific Exclusions can be different from the tags you use to set wholesale discounts. For example:
  • You set a wholesale price rule that says: Customers with the tag wholesale get 50% off the Entire Store.
  • You set a Customer Specific Exclusion that says, Product A is not visible to customers tagged hideA
  • Wholesale customer John is tagged wholesale - he can see Product A and gets 50% off the Entire store.
  • Wholesale Customer Jane is tagged wholesale and hideA - she can not see Product A, but still gets 50% off the rest of the store.
• Customer specific exclusions work with wholesale exclusions. If you set product tags in the wholesale exclusions section, these will be enforced in addition to customer specific exclusions. For example if you set a wholesale exclusion tag of ‘exclude’, products with this tag will be hidden from all wholesale customers, regardless of any Customer Specific Exclusions you create.
• Customer specific exclusions work with the ‘wholesale-only’ tag. If you want to hide a product from retail customers, you need to add the tag wholesale-only to the product. Setting a Customer Specific Exclusion will not automatically hide the product from retail customers.

Exclusion examples

You can get creative with different combinations of exclusion tags.  Here is an example that illustrates the way different rules interact.

Wholesale Price Rules

• Customers tagged ws20 get 20% off the Entire Store
• Customers tagged ws50 get 50% off the Entire Store

Exclusion Rules

• Wholesale Exclusion: Products tagged no-ws are hidden from all wholesale customers
• Customer Specific Exclusion: Products tagged no-ws50 are hidden from customers tagged ws50

Results

Tag overrides (pro)

Customer Specific Exclusions allow you to build complex product exclusion rules by giving you the ability to hide products from specific groups of customers.

You can use Wholesale Gorilla to hide certain products from retail or wholesale customers.  Hidden products will not be shown on collection pages, search, etc. for the specified customer group.

Tag overrides are available for professional subscriptions.

To learn more about overriding product exclusions and other premium features, visit our guide to our Professional plan!

To set a Customer Specific Exclusion:

• From the App homepage visit the Customers & Access page.
• Navigate tothe customer-specific exclusions section labled Tag overrides and click Customize tags.
• Click Add New.
• Set a Product Tag - Products with this tag will be hidden from the customer group you set in the next step.
• Set a Customer Tag - Customers with this tag will not see products with the tag set in step 4.
• Save.

Login to view prices

Pro Feature

Learn more about how to unlock premium features like hiding pricing unless logged in by going pro!

Enabling Log in to view prices will replace all prices on your store with text. This is especially helpful for stores set up exclusively for wholesale shopping.

To enable Log in to view prices:

1. Navigate to Customers & Access and scroll to Login to view prices

   

2. Add text to replace the hidden prices, along with adding a url for redirecting customers to a login page. (optional)

   

   Redirect to the Wholesale Gorilla login form

   To redirect to the Wholesale Gorilla login form add `/pages/ws-account-login` to the link field.

Who can view prices?

When Login to view prices is enabled, a customer must be a wholesale customer in order to view prices.  Customers will not be allowed to checkout unless they are logged in with a valid wholesale account.

Checkouts will be disabled for non-wholesale customers

When you enable Login to view prices, customers will not be allowed to check out unless they are logged in with a valid wholesale account.

Locked Pages

Pro Feature

Learn more about how to unlock premium features like hiding certain products and collections from customers by going pro!

Page locks allow you to restrict certain parts of your store from a particular group of customers. This is a great way to manage content that is only relevant to a certain type of customer (retail, wholesale, etc).

How to create a page lock

1. From Customers & Access scroll down to Locked pages, and select Manage Locked Pages.

2. On Locked Pages click Add New.

3.  Select the Customer Group you want to hide the content from (more info below). 
4.  Select the Lock Type.  If you selected URL, enter the URLs you would like to hide from these customers.
5. Save.

Customer Groups

You can hide pages from different groups of customers:

• All wholesale customers - these pages will only be visible to retail customers.
• All retail customers - these pages will only be visible to wholesale customers.
• Customers with a tag - If you select this option set a customer tag in the Tag input that appears below.  Customers with this tag will not be able to view the selected content.  Only one customer tag allowed per Page Lock rule.

Who is considered a wholesale customer?

A wholesale customer is a user who has a customer tag on their account that matches a wholesale price rule you have set in Wholesale Gorilla.  If a customer is logged in, and has tags on their account, that doesn't necessarily make them a wholesale customer.  The customer will need to be eligible for some sort of wholesale pricing to be considered a wholesale customer.

Lock Types

Entire Store

Locking your entire store will prevent the specified customer group from viewing any part of your store.   Typically the Entire Store lock type is used with the All retail customers group, for stores that are set up exclusively for wholesale shopping.   

The following pages are still accessible to all customers when an Entire Store lock is set:

• The store homepage
• Log in pages
• Sign up Pages

URL

Selecting the URL lock type allows you to set specific pages on your store that are hidden from the selected group of customers.  You can add multiple URLs to a specific customer group by clicking the Add New button under the list of inputs that appears.

Here are some examples of acceptable URL formats: 

When setting a URL we recommend visiting the page in your browser, and then copying the URL directly from the browser to avoid mistakes.

 

What the Customer Sees

When a customer attempts to view a page they are not allowed to visit, they are redirected to the Locked Content page. 

To customize the Locked Content page:

1. From the app homepage visit the Exclusions & Locks page.
2. Click on the Settings tab.
3. Scroll down to the Locked Content Page section.
4. Edit the page Title and Content as needed.
5. Save.