Shopify recurring payments/ orders are expanding at a breakneck pace. According to a McKinsey & Company study, 15% of internet customers have joined up for one or more subscription services. That’s a huge figure, especially when you consider that the number of online shoppers is expected to reach 2.14 billion soon.
As a result, it is undoubtedly one of the most incredible models, providing customers with the freedom they demand while providing merchants with the economic sustainability they seek. If done correctly, it may help you develop your business by leaps and bounds.
We’ll go through all you need to know about Shopify recurring payments in this article, including how subscription works, and provide you with some suggestions for getting started.
Let’s get started now!
Contents
Why Should You Set Up Shopify Recurring Payments?
Consumer purchasing patterns shift toward no-hassle shopping, free delivery, and rapid gratification. The subscription model meets all of these goals, providing value to clients with relatively little effort and offering significant growth opportunities for subscription-based enterprises.
Besides, a Shopify recurring subscription model costs clients a recurrent price in exchange for a consistent supply of products. This could include replacing comparable goods or curating fresh and unexpected items.
Therefore, this model is also a trend that e-commerce businesses want to pursue from any angle. To not fall behind, your store also needs to embrace this.
Shopify Recurring Payments/ Orders Model
Customer Lifetime Value
Shopify recurring payments/ orders are an excellent approach to keep your clients coming back. Specifically, subscriptions allow you to automate recurring payments and repeat transactions effectively.
Therefore, customers may place repeat orders without returning to your website, re-enter their credit card information, and checkout. Besides, customers who pay are more likely to stay because the recurring billing process is non-intrusive and seamless. They only need to sign up once to receive regular deliveries of their favorite products.
Overall, the automated repeat buy strategy boosts customer lifetime value and earnings per customer while lowering churn dramatically.
Predictive Revenue
Traditional eCommerce shopping relies on individual purchases and overall revenue, whereas subscription models rely on planned purchases and recurring revenue. This ongoing, predictable revenue is what makes a subscription valuable.
Moreover, subscriptions’ contract nature makes it simple to forecast future revenue and plan cash flow for other business needs.
The Shopify recurring charge’s regular revenue can be a lifeline for your firm during the market and retail cycle’s ups and downs, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. With this steady, predictable revenue, subscription-based firms can order and manage inventory more efficiently.
Increases Revenue
Shopify recurring payments/ orders also assist brands in increasing repeat purchases because you don’t have to earn business ad hoc every time if you have a loyal, subscribing consumer base. Selling to an established customer has a 60-70 percent likelihood of success and a 5-20 percent chance of success when selling to a new prospect.
Furthermore, pricing is more accessible with subscription-based businesses because stores focus on macro pricing with tiers rather than individual prices on an extensive range of products.
Reduce Missed/Late Payments
As said before, all subscription purchase charges are handled automatically via recurring payments/orders. There’s no need to bother finding out when a customer needs to make a payment because it’s already taken care of.
That means you don’t have to follow down with clients or remember when they joined up or when their next bill is due.
In addition, the consistency of shipments aids in the streamlining of your fulfillment processes, keeping expenses consistent and straightforward.
Upsell Opportunities
Basically, Shopify recurring subscriptions allow store owners to get information about customer behavior quickly. You can also deploy campaigns to target better and retain customers while preserving your store’s competitive advantages from that data.
Additionally, insights into subscription-based customer behavior allow Shopify stores to build better upselling, cross-selling, and marketing opportunities that traditional merchants can’t match.
What Features Does Shopify Offer For Recurring Payments/Orders?
The fact that Shopify does support recurring payments/orders. However, are these default features enough to satisfy your customers? Let’s find out below!
Shopify Default Features
There are now various subscription options accessible on Shopify. The most prevalent ones are:
- Customer subscription (also known as “product subscription”), which allows your customers to get products from the store regularly by filling out payment information only once; membership subscription, which will enable you to manage your recurring orders and payments; newsletter or email subscription to collect customer emails;
- Subscription discounts: Change the type of a discount; Change the utilization limitations on free shipping discounts.
- And More.
The following are the most frequent subscription intervals:
- Monthly subscription.
- Annual subscription.
- Weekly subscription.
Moreover, to use the subscription capability, you should use the following payment provider:
- Shopify Payments
- PayPal Express
- Authorize.net
Shopify Recurring Payments/ Orders – Shopify payments
However, because this functionality is not incorporated into the platform by default, it may now be enabled solely by leveraging one of the subscription apps from the Shopify App Store, such as Subscriptions by BSS.
The Limitation Of Shopify Recurring Payments/ Orders
As mentioned above, to set up a subscription, you must use a third-party application. However, not only that, but Shopify’s Subscription APIs also have other limitations, such as:
- Scripts that reduce the price of a subscription or delivery charges apply only to the first payment.
- Gift cards used to pay for Shopify subscriptions are only valid for the first payment.
- Shopify recurring charges can only be used by merchants who use Shopify Payments as their primary payment gateway. Furthermore, Shopify Payments are not available in every country.
- Subscription payment gateways are limited: Customers cannot purchase recurring subscriptions using accelerated checkouts or local payment options.
- Shopify recurring payments/ orders do not support “buy x get y” deals.
- Translations for multi-language marketplaces are not supported for selling plan titles. Shopify stated that this feature would be added in the future, although no specific timetable has been set.
As can be seen, Shopify recurring payments/ orders have many limitations if you do not know how to extend the features. This will directly affect the business performance of the store when the shopping experience is not perfect. Even for multinational or dropshipping stores, it is difficult for customers in some countries to purchase.
Therefore, we will provide tips to make your store efficient and remove the above restrictions.
How To Make Shopify Recurring Payments/ Orders More Effectively
Start From The Basics
Setting up Shopify recurring payments/ orders is not difficult; however, making it effective requires more effort. In particular, many store owners often skip the essential steps when starting the subscription model.
Before creating your subscription product, you’ll need to figure out a few things about what you’ll offer.
Concerning content, you should provide your customers with various options from which to choose. For example, one package may allow customers to use a specific service or product as many times as they like. Customers may select a combination of services or products as part of an additional package.
On the other hand, you also need to consider the payment process. Will you bill your consumers on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis? You’ll also need to pick whether payments will be automatic or whether customers will have to pay you manually at the beginning of the week, month, or year.
Download A Shopify Recurring Payments App
This step is required to set up a Shopify recurring subscription. However, among many apps available on the Shopify App Store, which one is the best and suitable for you?
In fact, Shopify and Shopify Plus do not save payment information. Thus, they cannot handle recurring purchases or payments independently – a third-party Shopify recurring payments app is required.
Do not know what is the best payment method for your store? Check out Shopify Payment Gateways
Using a Shopify subscription app will enhance your Shopify store’s subscription capabilities by adding subscription options to product pages, storing payment and subscription information, and automating recurring orders and payments.
Among the top subscription apps, Subscriptions by BSS is the comprehensive one and is full of features from basic to advanced. Specifically, the app allows you to make as many subscription plans as you like and give discounts to increase sales. Besides, it provides both subscriptions and one-time purchases. As a result, your consumers may use a mixed cart checkout to purchase both one-time and recurring products in a single transaction.
Subscriptions by BSS help you build Shopify recurring payments/ orders effortlessly and without coding knowledge.
And yet, Subscriptions by BSS Commerce Shopify allow your customers to cancel or pause subscriptions at any time and send informative emails about any subscription changes. It also integrates seamlessly with the shopping cart and checkout page, meaning both you and your customers can easily manage subscription orders without any other add-ons.
Customer portals – for managing subscriptions, changing frequency, and switching products.
TRY THE FREE VERSION AT SUBSCRIPTIONS BY BSS
Configure Subscription Fulfillment
Indeed, delivering Shopify recurring payments/ orders on time and a good grade is critical for maintaining subscribers, especially if clients pay in advance.
Shopify Fulfillment Services And Top 4 Shopify Fulfillment Providers
Even though the Shopify apps will re-generate orders for you, you must manually fulfill these items. This work, however, will be handled for you if you set up a subscription fulfillment service. As a result, it’s critical to:
- Integrate the fulfillment partner directly with your Shopify store when the subscription is created again.
- Customers should receive tracking information regularly to know when their next subscription will arrive.
- Ship items in two days or fewer, so clients don’t have to wait long after payment for orders to arrive – especially when refilling supplies.
NOTE: If you’re not sure about your ability to fulfill Shopify recurring charges in-house, try outsourcing fulfillment with a small number of products.
It is your responsibility or that of your Shopify fulfillment partner to ship products.
Check out Best Shopify Fulfillment Apps For Increasing Customer Experience if you are still looking for a fulfillment partner.
Promote And Market Your Subscriptions
Because subscriptions need a long-term commitment, you must work a little harder with your product promotions and marketing to build client trust, reduce risk, and convert cautious shoppers.
To acquire the trust of their customers, many subscription-based firms employ marketing methods. Some businesses, for example, provide free shipping, free trials, and a variety of promotions and discounts to their clients.
Moreover, efficient subscription marketing strategies include:
- Social proof is enlisting influencers in your eCommerce marketing approach to provide favorable feedback about your Shopify recurring payments/ orders on social media, blogs, and YouTube.
- Employ referral programs and discount vouchers to lower the perceived risk of subscribing to your products. Consider BLOOP REWARDS & REFERRALS to create automated referral programs in a blink.
Create a referral link, popup, and widget automatically with BLOOP REWARDS & REFERRALS.
- You also can use social media and search engine ads to promote your subscription products and entice buyers to try short-term memberships.
- Lastly, make memberships more valuable to your customers by offering free shipping, trial subscriptions, and discounts.
With Subscriptions by BSS, you can easily create engaging verbal ties with customers. Merchants may personalize messaging, recommendations, and advertisements for each subscriber, resulting in a more personalized and memorable experience.
Personalized email notifications sent to customers by Shopify subscription app
Furthermore, you can also choose to use the Purchase Late/ Net Terms feature from the B2B Portal/Net Terms for regular customers as a way of gratitude. Specifically, the app provides net payment arrangements to a chosen group of clients. It also enables specific customers to create an unpaid order right from their shopping cart. Customers must pay within the time limit stated (e.g., Net15/30/45/60/90).
Free trial of BSS: B2B Portal/Net Terms
More Tips To Grow Your Shopify Recurring Subscriptions
If the four steps above are the basic things you need to do when setting up Shopify recurring payments/ orders, these tips below will make your store more professional.
Provide Real Value
It is critical to provide genuine value in your Shopify recurring subscription. People aren’t going to buy goods they don’t need or desire to accumulate. Gentleman’s Box is a typical example, as it sells men’s fashion accessories that you might not buy otherwise.
Every quarter, The Gentleman’s Box – an example of Shopify recurring payments/ orders business, delivers luxury lifestyle things for $100.
Make It A Pleasurable Experience
Because everyone enjoys unpacking, why not make your subscription package an enjoyable experience? Include a surprise element or offer an unexpected supplementary product as a gift. Even minor details can enhance the overall experience.
Moreover, a perfect shopping experience will make your store more professional and satisfy customers. Especially when shopping at your store saves time and effort than other stores which is a big plus. Therefore, once again, it must be emphasized that the importance of third-party applications is conspicuous.
Get Communication Right
Obviously, customers want to know that they can reach you fast if they regularly give you money. Prompt response on a chat support function demonstrates your brand’s dependability.
Don’t limit your communication to customer service; you should also maintain an active blog with valuable material to increase the trustworthiness of your business.
In addition, if you want your customers to keep returning for more, you should aim to establish employee-consumer ties. There are several approaches you might take. Keep basic ‘thank you for your purchase’ communications to a minimum, as they can come across as dishonest.
Instead, commemorate their birthdays, anniversaries, or any other unique personal events. You might also provide customers with specials, promotions, or discounts if they remain loyal to your company after a set period.
Offer Multiple Payment Methods
You must ensure that the checkout procedure is as simple as possible. This is true for every business, but it is especially true for Shopify recurring payments/ orders because first-time customers face significantly higher barriers.
Consider making your checkout process seamless.
Consider What Is Best For Your Company
The method you use is determined by the things you’re selling. Therefore, make sure you research to determine the effectiveness of subscription types in your niche.
For instance, if your Shopify store is a clothing brand, you can consider including a subscription as a side feature on your website. If you sell skincare, you should concentrate your efforts on subscriptions and only a tiny amount on one-time product sales.
Also, if clothing or jewelry has become a boring idea, a pet treats subscription business is also a suggestion. Everyone adores their pets, so working with animals is another idea. You may establish a subscription service that sends pet treats to your customers.
A fantastic example of a dog food subscription business is Grateful Dog. However, you can expand the idea instead of limiting yourself to solely dogs. You can serve many kinds of pets, from cats to rabbits and birds.
Grateful Dog – An example of Shopify recurring charge.
Final Thoughts
Shopify recurring payments/ orders is an incredibly effective model nowadays. The benefits of a consistent revenue stream are enormous. Still, it would help if you weighed them against the increased cost of customer acquisition and the company model’s fragility in times of financial crisis. When their money account is depleted, people are ready to cancel subscriptions.
If you follow this approach and employ the best recurring payment app Shopify like Subscriptions by BSS, I’m confident you’ll be able to put up a profitable Shopify subscription business.
Read More: How To Optimize Product Page For Better Conversions to enhance the customer shopping experience. It will be beneficial for your Shopify recurring subscription model.
