Customer Sign-in Options
Your storefront gives shoppers three ways to sign in: a classic email and password, a passwordless magic link sent to their inbox, and Continue with Google. This page explains each one, why the Google button opens a separate window, and how signing in ties into the customer-profile step that every account completes before ordering.
Availability: Customer accounts and sign-in are part of the full commerce storefront — Commerce and up (paid plans). On the Free plan the storefront is a Request-a-Quote inquiry form with no accounts or sign-in at all.
The three ways to sign in
| Method | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Email & password | The shopper registers with an email and password, then signs in with them. Self-service password reset is built in. | Customers who want a traditional login |
| Magic link | The shopper enters their email and receives a one-tap sign-in link — no password to remember or reset. | Fast, low-friction sign-in on any device |
| Continue with Google | One-click sign-in with an existing Google account, in a secure popup window. | Shoppers who'd rather not create another password |
All three land the customer in the same place: signed in to your shop, ready to complete their profile and order.
Email & password
The standard path. From the storefront's Sign in / Create account screens, a shopper registers with their email and a password, or signs in with credentials they already have. If they forget their password, they use Forgot password to get a reset email.
Because the storefront lives inside your website (in an iframe), password-reset emails are handled carefully so the customer lands back on your page — not a bare TimberCloud URL. The embed script takes care of this automatically; see Setup and the API Reference for the routing details.
Magic-link (passwordless) sign-in
On the sign-in screen, a customer can choose the magic link option, enter their email address, and receive a sign-in link in their inbox. Tapping that link:
- Verifies the link's token (each link is single-use and expires).
- Signs the customer in and links their account to your shop as a Customer.
- Hands them off to the customer-profile onboarding step if they haven't completed it yet.
No password is ever created or entered. This is especially handy on phones, where typing a strong password is a chore, and it eliminates password-reset support requests entirely.
Tip: Magic links are time-limited and one-time-use. If a customer says their link "doesn't work," it has almost always already been used or has expired — have them request a fresh one.
Continue with Google
The sign-in screens show a Continue with Google button. Clicking it opens a top-level popup window where the customer signs in with Google; once they approve, the popup closes and hands the session back to the storefront.
Why a popup instead of loading inline? Your storefront runs inside an iframe on your website. Google (and other identity providers) deliberately refuse to load their sign-in pages inside an iframe for security reasons — so a normal in-page login would simply fail. TimberCloud works around this by opening Google's sign-in in its own browser window, then passing the result securely back to the embedded storefront.
Note: Browsers may block popups by default. If a shopper clicks Continue with Google and nothing happens, they need to allow popups for your site and try again. The storefront shows a short "please allow popups" message when it detects this.
What about Microsoft? A Continue with Microsoft option is wired into the storefront but is currently turned off pending provider verification. Today, Google is the only social sign-in shown to customers.
The customer-profile onboarding gate
No matter which method a customer uses, TimberCloud makes sure every account has complete details before it can order. The moment a shopper is authenticated without a finished profile, the storefront sends them to a short onboarding page:
"Please complete your customer profile to continue."
Until the profile is done, browsing and ordering are blocked — only the onboarding and sign-in pages stay open. Once it's complete, the customer is returned to their account and can shop freely from then on. The profile they fill out becomes their record in your CRM.
Guest checkout (where you allow it) is the one exception — a guest can check out without creating an account or a saved profile. Any signed-in account, however, must finish onboarding first.
Next Steps
- Storefront Features — the full customer-facing experience, including the account area
- Going Live — test mode, the test card, and store availability
- Setup — install the storefront and how password-reset routing works
- Customer portal — what the customer profile and account record look like on your side
- The Free Inquiry Storefront — the accounts-free experience on the Free plan