A shopper finds something they love and hits "Create Account." Then comes the password requirements—uppercase, lowercase, number, symbol, blood of a unicorn. They abandon the cart.

A loyal customer who always buys on desktop tries to log in from their phone. Something doesn't work. They'll "try again later"—but later rarely comes.

You probably call this "login stuff" or "account issues." But underneath these moments is something bigger: Identity. And whether you've thought about it or not, you're already making high-stakes decisions about it every day.

What identity actually means for a B2C business

For any business selling to consumers, customer identity is how you recognize someone across visits and devices, let them into the right places, and remember their choices and history.

Here's what's easy to miss: you're already doing identity. Every time you decide who can create an account without friction, who can update their payment method safely, who can see their order history across web and app—you're shaping your identity infrastructure.

The question isn't whether you have an identity strategy. You do. The question is whether it's working for you—or quietly working against you.

Identity is infrastructure, not a feature

Most B2C businesses treat identity as a checkbox. We have login. Done.

But identity touches everything:

Revenue. If sign-up feels like a chore, people leave before they buy. Each friction point—creating an account, logging in on mobile, resetting a password—quietly cuts conversion. You won't see "abandoned because login was annoying" in your analytics, but it's there.

Trust. When account recovery feels broken or data handling feels unclear, customers don't complain. They just stop coming back. Clear identity flows are the backbone of digital trust—more than your privacy banners or marketing copy.

Operations. Without a consistent view of "who this customer is," you end up with scattered profiles across systems. Support can't see the full picture, marketing risks wrong messages, and every new channel makes fragmentation worse.

When identity works, no one notices. When it doesn't, everything downstream suffers.

Why this matters more now

People live across channels. Customers move between web, app, marketplace, and social expecting you to recognize them as one person. They don't see "channels"—they see your brand.

The bar has been raised. Banking apps, food delivery, streaming—these trained consumers to expect fast login, seamless recovery, and profiles that just work. When you can't match that, it feels broken.

Privacy consciousness is real. People want convenience and control. This is the tension identity navigates: make it effortless, but don't be creepy with my data.

Get it wrong: abandoned carts, support tickets, declining repeat business. Get it right: it feels invisible—but your numbers move.

What this looks like in practice

Before: Separate logins for web and app. Account changes handled manually by support. No self-service. Support agents working from incomplete profiles.

After: One account everywhere. Self-service for updates and recovery. Customers control their own data. Support sees the same unified identity the customer sees.

Nothing flashy changed—just how identity is structured underneath. Result? Support tickets dropped, repeat purchases increased, and launching new channels got easier because the customer model was clear and portable.

The shift

For B2C businesses, identity isn't a "future project." It's already deciding how easy it is to buy from you, how much customers trust you, and how fast you can try new ideas without rebuilding everything.

You don't need enterprise complexity. You just need to see identity as foundational infrastructure that deserves intention, not afterthought.

Where do you feel identity friction most—sign-up, login, or recovery?

This is the 1st post of a series on: Thinking Identity Across Different Lenses. Next: Consumer expectations around login, privacy, and personalization—is your business keeping up?

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Identity: The Quiet Infrastructure Behind Your Business

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