Retaining customers is unique to subscription stores. While driving traffic to a store and converting visitors into buyers is common for all online businesses, retention is an additional aspect that subscription stores must focus on to fully realize their potential. Customers churn for various reasons, and it is the seller's responsibility to try to prevent it. One effective tactic is to simply ask subscribers why they are pausing or canceling their subscriptions and then offer solutions to keep them subscribed.

Ask Your Subscribers Why They Want To Cancel

When a subscriber decides to cancel, sellers can direct them to do so online while capturing their reason for cancellation. Recharge provides custom workflow designs to tailor this retention experience. For instance, if a buyer states that they have too much product, the flow can direct them to simply skip the next shipment rather than cancel the whole subscription. If they find the product too expensive, they can be presented with a discount offer for their next shipment. The possibilities are numerous and limited only by the seller's imagination.

One popular supplements store offers the following options to customers looking to cancel:

1. I already have too much of the product.
2. I’m taking a break.
3. It doesn’t work for me.
4. It is too expensive.
5. I’m going on a vaccation.
6. Other – describe.

Each selection can be met with a counteroffer or suggestion from the store:

1. Rather than cancel, you can just skip the next shipment.
2. Can you tell us why? (This allows them to explain.)
3. Have you tried increasing the dosage?
4. We can offer you a discount for the next six months.
5. We can send product to your vacation address.
6. Please tell us why, and we’ll see if we can make you a special offer.

Offer Rewards to Repeat Customers

Another strategy to combat churn is to offer frequent rewards to repeat customers. For example, redeemable reward points can be given for each repeat order, which can then be used as discounts on future purchases. The theory is that nobody wants to lose what they already have; therefore, it is an effective way to encourage customers to stay subscribed a bit longer.

Implement Winback Strategies

Winback strategies come into play after a customer has already canceled. If a store has information about why the cancellation occurred, they can address those concerns in follow-up emails. When customer concerns are effectively addressed, winback rates can be very high—reportedly up to 35% in some cases. For instance, a store might notify customers that prices have been reduced or that new products have been introduced (such as new coffee flavors).

Avoid Passive Churn

Additionally, there is passive churn, which occurs when a customer’s payment method is no longer valid, and they did not provide a new one. This can happen without the customer’s awareness, so it is crucial that every failed charge attempt is followed by an email notification to them.

In summary, a subscription represents a relationship that begins the moment someone signs up. Like any long-lasting relationship, it needs to be nurtured through loyalty rewards, occasional gifts, and a general display of care for the customer. Many subscription stores offer live customer service — one of my clients refers to it as “Customer happiness service.” When challenges arise in the merchant – customer relationship, it is essential to take steps to get relationship back on track, using churn prevention tools and win-back strategies.

The post Retaining Subscribers first appeared on SELLTEK.

A CEO’s Take on Subscription eCommerce

The CEO of Carthook, a popular Shopify plugin that enables stores to offer upsells at checkout, previously ran an online store business. He famously stated, “If I were starting my online store again, I would insist with my partners that we sell everything as a subscription.”

The Advantages of Subscriptions

Subscriptions provide many advantages: a steady revenue stream, reduced advertising costs, and higher lifetime value (LTV) per customer. They are a retailer’s dream. Although not all products are suitable for subscription, many are. Even seemingly non-obvious products, such as fashion, can sometimes be transitioned into subscription models. For example, some companies send customers curated boxes each month—products they can keep or return—upon paying a fixed monthly fee. Essentials like medications, cleaning supplies, personal hygiene products, coffee, and other consumables that are replenished regularly are also prime candidates for subscriptions.

Subscription Complexity: Simple vs. Advanced

Subscription offerings can range from simple to complex. Some products can be offered as either one-time or subscription purchases, often with a discount. For instance, toothpaste can be a simple subscription: a checkbox plus a dropdown for delivery frequency. Apps like Recharge Payments and Bold, which integrate with Shopify, can set up these simple subscriptions quickly.

More complex subscriptions may involve customization. For example, a Keurig coffee maker allows customers to create personalized boxes with different coffee flavors. Customizing and editing these boxes requires additional development, but many companies find the investment worthwhile, as it significantly increases sales of coffee pods.

Strategies to Increase Subscription Revenue

Unique strategies can further boost subscription revenue. For example, since most subscribers cancel within three months or less, offering prepayment options at a 20% discount for the entire year can encourage longer retention. Another effective tactic is trial-to-subscription conversion: allowing customers to purchase a discounted sample, which, if they don’t cancel, automatically converts to a full-priced recurring subscription.

Why Subscriptions Drive Higher Revenue

In summary, online subscription stores often generate higher revenue due to lower customer acquisition costs, increased LTV, and more predictable cash flow.

For more information or tailored advice for your business, feel free to reach out here.

The post Subscription eCommerce first appeared on SELLTEK.

The Conversion Mistake New Store Owners Make

Many store owners who are new to eCommerce think that traffic to their store is the most important thing. They spend most of their time pursuing various sources of traffic but they ignore the conversion on the store. They put together a store of sub-optial looks, don't care about the best practices and conventions or what buyers expect and respond to - because they don't now these things, and they firmly believe that if you can get people to store then they will buy.

Traffic x Conversion = Sales

Unfortunately people also leave stores for various reasons. Sales = traffic x conversion, and improving conversion is usually a lower hanging fruit. It is much easier to double or triple conversion of a poorly designed store than it is to achieve same numbers on traffic. However result is the same.

Poor Design = Lost Opportunities

Another downside of neglecting conversion with store that is poorly designed is that many store visitors will leave the site simply because it doesn't look right or trustworthy. These first time visitors will most likely never come back. Thus investing in traffic but not taking care of the store is throwing your money away. Not only you don't get all the sales that you could but you also loose many people for good. Take care of your store before you invest thousands of dollars in traffic. You will see a much better return on your investment.

Final Note on Conversion vs. Traffic

In this blog I wrote many posts about conversion alone, but I felt that I also need to emphasize it in relation to traffic for those folks who skip those posts and go straight to the marketing section looking for yet another traffic source to pursue.

The post What’s this conversion anyway? first appeared on SELLTEK.

It is an uneasy feeling when many people come to your online store and then leave w/o buying anything. Some percents are expected but others can be helped with. To better understand what makes too many visitors leave your site w/o buying, I compiled a list of factors that you can check against and see if some factor may be lacking on your store. Every online store owner with a conversion problem should examine it carefully.

Common Reasons Shoppers Don't Convert

1. Product Demand

As much as you think that some product is interesting, there may be insufficient demand from the buyers. There could be too many sellers already selling it, the price could be better on other sites, or the product is complex and new and people still need education. Whatever the reason, you need to understand what is happening before you allocate effort into traffic and conversion improvements that will not help. That is not to say that demand can not be changed but you need to simply know if this is the reason for lower conversion.

2. Product Price

While product's price is intimately connected to demand it deserves its own section. Price can be either too high or too low. If you set it much higher than can be bought elsewhere then buyers will obviously buy it elsewhere. But price can be also too low and will hurt the conversion. For example if you sell an otherwise $3,000 designer item, like a pair of designer shoes, but on your site they cost $300 without explanation, buyers will reasonably assume that there is something wrong with the item. Also, for items that are new and value is not easy determined, you need to provide enough information so buyers will know that the price is a good deal or at least fair. For example, I saw a nice wooden frame watch on some new site yesterday and it cost $49. Problem was that besides a pretty picture I could not tell from product description if the watch was worth $9 or $99. A few words on what mechanism is inside, who makes it, and what is its warranty would have most likely convinced me to buy it instead I decided to pass.

3. Product Description

Product detail page is a place where you actually sell your product. Good and informative description can make or brake customer's decision to place your item in the shopping cart. Description should include images, inform buyers about the use and the benefits, list features specifications and anything that you would want to now if you were the buyer. Not too long and not too short is the perfect length. Make sure images are of high quality and with proper background. good product descriptions is essential for driving traffic to your store through SEO as well.

4. Branding

Branding is a fuzzy topic to talk about but everyone sees it when its presented or when it is lacking. Branding is a visual, mental, and any other presentation of your business that is unique to you. You achieve it with logo, site colors, business cards, email templates, consistent messaging, tag line and anything else you can think of. If brand achieves a good status, the buyers form a relation and trust with the brand. Good examples are Apple, Amazon, BMW where everyone instantly forms an image once the name is presented. To develop a well known brand takes effort and time. As a store owner, who is just starting, you can however still make a consistent appearance and a nice logo. The absence of these is as damaging to conversion as is having a strong brand very useful.

5. Trust

When visitors come to your online store they must trust you if you want them to buy. In online world, trust is even more important than in physical stores. 1. You pay for your order with a credit card while you never saw anyone who works for the store. 2. You don't know if store owner has products that are on pictures. 3. You don't know if they will be shipped. 4. You don't know if the express shipping you paid for will be observed. 5. You don't know how difficult will be to return the products. There can be more but these should get point across why trust in online world is important. These are all obstacles a store must overcome, especially with first time buyers. Some techniques you can use is to make a secure site (SSL certificate or https), list testimonials, get a BBB (Better Business Bureau) certificate and place it on the site, become a Google certified store, get some press coverage, list phone number and address of your store, show picture of the store, offer live chat, and more.

6. Imagery and Visual Appeal

Picture is worth a thousand words. Nowhere is that more true than in online shopping. Beautiful imagery can make or break your site. If you sell apparel or shoes, the image is the main presentation and decision factor in making a sale. Images, site colors and other graphic design features work on conscious as well as subconscious levels. If you are not good at it, hire a graphic designer or at least have one to look at your site and tell you what they think. Looks may or may not break the conversion but if there are other factors present it may just make the difference.

7. Standard Policies

Four standard policies should be displayed on your store: Terms of Use, Privacy, Shipping, and Returns. While Privacy is more or less dictated by laws and some common sense such as not reselling customer emails and sharing their private information the Terms policy has an important Returns policy in it. Both, Privacy and Terms policies are expected on page by the customers even if many don't read them. Shipping and Return policies on the other hand are read by most customers. They should all be easily found in the footer of every page of your store.

8. Shipping Options and Costs

Different customers have different expectations and needs about shipping. Some care about cost, some about speed, and some like a particular balance between cost and speed. Inadequate shipping options can be a deal breaker. Nowadays stores try to display shipping costs as soon as possible in the checkout, offering free shipping for certain orders, and a variety of delivery options. Th important thing to note is, that not all customers have same expectations or needs.

9. Returns, Exchanges, and Refunds

There is no doubt that customers want to be able to return things they buy in case they don't like or if something is wrong with the products they have received. Returns is a rather complex legal, operational, and selling topic. some items like downloaded software or food and other perishables cannot be returned or it makes no sense to return them. you should think about returns before you start selling. some sellers charge restocking fee or they don't pay for shipping when item is returned even if it is for good reason. Everything has consequences. Situation you need to think of and which require different actions are: returns because you shipped the wrong product, buyer claims that product description on your store was not what was delivered, product was defective, product was damaged in transport, item doesn't fit - frequent with shoes and apparel, or the buyer simply changed her mind and wants to return the product. In some cases product can be exchanged in other the only solution is to refund the money. Complete returns program is beyond the scope of this post but I plan on writing another post that will cover this interesting topic in more detail.

10. Payment Options

Payment options on store are similar to shipping options thought they address different needs. Some customers care very much about the security and prefer to pay with a PayPal. Dependent on the type of products you sell, other options may be appropriate as well such as electronic checks or even cash on delivery or COD, which is a very popular option in Europe.

11. Usability

Usability is part of the user experience. While an easy and intuitive web store is almost expected, it is easy to make it more complicated than it needs to be. A long history of issues and improvements associated with checkout pages is proof that there is always an easier way to do something. Not understanding what is the next step or how to perform it will frustrate the user who then decides to leave your store. Or a user may simply have a hard time navigating around and finding things. Steve Krug, an authority in the field of usability testing famously said: Don't make me think!. That is why usability is a very important factor on your store that can all by itself bring your conversions to halt. Usability can sometimes be hard to pin down since it is as much science as is an art. Many users need to be observed and provide their feedback to see what are most pressing problems to fix. Without proper testing it is easy to fix one thing and create another problem at the same time. Tools such as A/B testing, where 2 versions of feature are presented to 2 different groups of users and observing which one works better are commonly used in fixing and testing usability problems. Analytics tools such as Google Analytics are also used to pinpoint problems on your store in cases when observing users in the controlled test environment is not an option or simply as a complementary method. In this blog post on usability we examine this factor in more detail.

12. Mobile Experience

Over 60% of online shopping is now done on mobile devices. Factors that affect conversion are the same as on desktop with an additional constraint that it is more difficult to type and fill out any forms than it is on desktop. Stores need to be designed in a way to look good on mobile and that usually means different than on the larger monitor. Thing to remember here is that more people visit your store from the phone than on any other device.

13. Abandoned Carts

Abandoned carts management is an attempt to bring back people, who already left your store, to complete their purchase. Emailing cart content and re-marketing -showing again cart content or other looked at products on other web sites as ads, are two standard approaches to improve the conversion.

14. Fulfillment

From customer's standpoint it is a post purchase experience and it comes down to whether the order arrived, undamaged, and in time that was promised. Needless to say, if this part isn't right, the customer is unlikely to come back to your store.

15. Mismatched Expectations

Last but not least are mismatched expectations. They can happen when you do a good job advertising your store but the store then does not match buyers' expectations. This can happen unintentionally when you don't understand well some of your buyers or when buyer for some reason did not understand properly the advertising message. Since this is not a store problem it is rarely mentioned but it is very real. Anyone who has done AdWords campaigns knows how much guessing goes into ads in hope that landing page will be exactly what visitor wants and expects. Mismatched expectation is characterized by a high bounce rate - that is visitors leave the site very quickly as they discover that it is not what they expected. You can prevent this by showing your ads to some of your friends and/or customers beforehand and see what they think. Just being aware of it is also often enough.

That's it. If you keep all of these 15 factors in check you will be in a better shape than if you don't.

The post 15 Steps to Better Conversion first appeared on SELLTEK.

Whatever you do, don’t make it more complicated for buyers than it needs to be to return products they bought.

First, decide whether returns are an option at all. A lower price on products and a strong guarantee that products will arrive as described are required if you don’t allow any returns, or the return option applies to only when products are not as they were advertised. A no return policy is not an advantage unless you have good reasons for it other than costs. Delivering perishable items, such as flowers or food may be such good reason as they may be worthless by the time they are returned.

Generous Return Policies Can Pay Off

On the other hand, Zappos was famous for selling shoes with an unlimited free return and reordering policy. Barrier to buy due to lack of ability to try the shoe when buying it online was compensated for by this policy to a great cost to Zappos. Nevertheless, they made it work and Zappos became one of the largest sellers of shoes online.

Key Guidelines for Handling Returns

In all cases:

• Be quick to return customer’s money if that’s what they asked for.
• Ask for reasons for their return and offer some gift if it was your fault.
• See returns as an opportunity to learn about your customers and what corrections you need to make either in policies, procedures, store product descriptions or other.

Keep buyers always feeling in control by providing them with appropriate guarantees of which knowing they can either return the product at least in cases when items are not as they were advertised is the one that is essential. Learn more with our eCommerce Blog.

The post Should I Allow Buyers to Return Products They Bought? first appeared on SELLTEK.