What is a Customer?
In ecommerce architecture, a Customer represents the entity placing orders and completing financial transactions.
A customer profile aggregates purchasing history, saved shipping addresses, default payment methods, marketing consent (email/SMS), and lifetime value (LTV) metrics.
Guest vs. Registered Customer
Ecommerce platforms handle two primary customer states during checkout:
- Guest Customer: Places an order using an email or phone number without creating a password-protected account.
- Registered Customer: Creates a persistent account allowing one-click checkout, order tracking, order history viewing, and saved addresses.
Customer Attributes
A typical customer record contains:
id: Permanent unique database primary key.email&phone: Contact identifiers.first_name&last_name: Personal name attributes.addresses: Array of shipping and billing addresses.orders_count: Number of completed orders.total_spent: Total historical revenue generated.
Common Confusion
Developer Takeaway
GDPR & Privacy Compliance: Customer records store Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Ensure your database and log pipelines comply with data protection regulations (GDPR/CCPA) by providing automated endpoints to redact or delete customer data upon request.