What is the difference between customers and guests in WooCommerce and Metorik?
If you're wanting to understand the definition of New Customers vs Returning Customers, check out this guide here: How does Metorik define a New or Returning Customer?
By default, a user on your store can checkout as either a customer or a guest. What's the difference between the two roles?
Customers
Customers are those that have an account on your store that they can login to. That means that either during checkout or from the My Account page, they opted to create an account and now have their details saved on your store for future purchases.
Guests
Guests on the other hand are those users that have made a purchase from your store but didn't create an account. Of course, orders made by guests show up alongside orders made by customers in the Orders list and in the Orders (and similar) reports.
Metorik's approach
Metorik doesn't care if a customer checked out as a guest. They're still a customer, so we give them a customer profile, include them in customer-related reports and KPIs, and they'll show up in your list of customers.
If a guest has made multiple orders as a guest (or perhaps, some as a customer and some as a guest), Metorik will group them together under the one customer profile by using the email, so you can see your most valuable customers and guests.
When filtering orders and customers, you'll find a 'customer type' filter. This can be used to find orders made by registered customers or customers who checked as guests. Similarly, you could use it to see all customers that have accounts or don't have accounts.
One caveat is that guests can not have custom meta fields, as they don't have a registered account in WordPress to link the meta fields to.
If any of this is unclear, please send us a message and we'll walk you through it.