Subscription Sales Success: Tools We Recommend

Subscription Sales Success: Tools We Recommend

by | Jul 28, 2021 | Adobe/Magento, eCommerce, Technology

In Part One of our Subscription Sales blog series we covered why you should consider adding this offering to your eCommerce platform. Here in Part Two, we’ll talk more about how you can make such an offering a reality for your customers.

(Here’s the 10-second recap from Part One: Subscription Sales are booming in popularity for eCommerce competitors because they can create a recurring revenue stream that makes customers happy and, once operational, require little additional management oversight. And here is the full first article if you’d like to catch up.)

Let’s take a look at solutions offered by two of the most popular eCommerce platforms, Magento and Big Commerce, in supporting a Subscription Sales option for you.

Magento Extensions and Plug-In Options

eCommerce merchants whose sites are built on the Magento platform will find a couple of popular options that bring Subscription Sales into reach:  the Advanced Subscription Products extension from Aheadworks and the Subscriptions and Recurring Payments tool offered by Magenest.

Aheadworks is a well-established provider of Magento-compatible products. For those seeking to add Subscription Sales options to their platform, they offer a well-conceived and well-executed option. Wide flexibility is offered for creating and altering Subscription Sales options from both the customer’s side of the transaction and from the seller’s side. Interfaces are clean and easy to navigate.

Here’s a view of the overview screen for managing subscriptions.

A look at a page that allows customers to monitor subscriptions they have chosen.

Skin-care site Lancer offers a good example of what Subscription Sales offerings can look like from the customer’s point of view.

Another plug-in option for managing Subscription Sales in Magento is Magenest’s Subscriptions & Recurring Payments tool. It offers similar functionality to the Aheadworks extension. It also includes a straightforward tool for allowing customers to set up subscription orders for customers who buy a product at regular intervals, which has become a particularly popular offering within the B2B sector. Plan flexibility appears to be a real strength with this plug-in.

BigCommerce Plug-In Options

Tools are available to support and fuel  eCommerce Subscription Sales in SAAS platforms like BigCommerce as well. The Aneto Subscriptions Manager plug-in for BigCommerce offers much of the same functionality as we’ve already seen from the Magento offerings.

Here’s a look at the overview screen for this plug-in.

The Aneto Subscriptions Manager plug-in brings key functionality that drives BigCommerce platform Subscription Sales success. eCommerce merchants are able to create multiple subscription packages and have the flexibility to divide product offerings up into grouped categories. Value offerings popular with customers such as the ability to include free products and discount coupons in your packages are other capabilities included with this plug-in.

Conclusion

Subscription Sales Models show few signs of slowing down as a growing sector in the eCommerce landscape. Data from the Subscribed Institute showed that in 2020, the subscription sales sector grew 11.6%, including accelerating to a 21% growth rate in the fourth quarter of the year. If you haven’t done so already, you should consider how your eCommerce business could add Subscription Sales to your offerings. Please contact us for assistance in getting your subscription functionality set up and running.

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Perfect Page, Poor Traffic? Why Site Speed Matters

Perfect Page, Poor Traffic? Why Site Speed Matters

by | Jul 21, 2021 | eCommerce, SEO, Technology

Having a fast-loading, high-performance website is crucial to your eCommerce business. But why? Because the speed of your page plays a vital role in your conversions, user experience, and Search Ranking. Unfortunately, too many website owners place a priority on having too many bells and whistles and an overly sophisticated website design, both of which slow your site, instead of focusing on performance. 

Think about it like this. If you go to sit down for a meal at a restaurant, slow service from the waiter often results in poor reviews and fewer return visits. Similarly, when you sit down to browse a website, slow service can drive you away and potentially steer you towards a competitor. If it’s annoying for you to wait for dinner at a restaurant or for a website to load, think about how your site visitors feel. 

In this blog, we will discuss some best practices to ensure your eCommerce site speed is not hurting your search rankings, users’ experience, site traffic, and conversion rate. But first, it is important to understand what site speed is and how to measure it.   

Site Speed Defined

CSite speed often referred to as Site Performance or page speed, is how quickly your eCommerce browser can load fully. Poorly performing sites that render slowly in a browser can drive users away. Conversely, sites that load quickly will typically receive more traffic and have better conversion rates. 

Why Your Website Speed Matters

Your site speed is important for the overall user experience you are trying to create. If your site takes a long time to load you will tend to have a higher bounce rate and lower average time spent on your site due to this low speed. The example below from Google shows how longer load times have been shown to affect your conversion and bounce rates negatively.

Speed Test Tool Recommendations to Help Your Site’s Performance

Before you can begin to make any fixes, you first need to know where your site is in terms of speed. The speed that you need to be looking at is your time to first byte (TTFB). This determines the time the server sends your browser’s very first byte; which Google states should be 200 ms or less. You can easily measure your TTFB and other speed metrics by using a load time testing site. Below are some that can help you with this:

Each of these tools will assign a score to your site based on Google recommendations and provide you with tips on improving your site’s performance.  When it comes to site speed testing, it’s important to pick one tool and stick with it. Each has its own set of different metrics and therefore you can’t compare one tool’s test results to another. In addition, you should run multiple tests to ensure that your results continue to improve your user’s experience.

Factors Affecting Your Site’s Speed

Your site speed relies on many factors and determining which of them are affecting it will help you improve its speed and ranking. Here are some of the most common problems that prevent sites from loading faster and lead to potential customer loss. 

Compressing/optimizing large images: Loading large images is one of the main issues to cause your site to run slow, especially for mobile users. You can use Gzip, a software application for file compression, to reduce the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files that are larger than 150 bytes. Such services will result in compression without loss of quality, and therefore your users will not even notice the difference in their experience if using a desktop versus mobile.

Reduce redirects: Each time your page redirects a user to another page, it increases their waiting time. Reducing your redirects will help reduce the HTTP request-response to complete and speed up your site page.

Reduce themes and plugins: The more widgets and plugins you utilize on your site, the longer it takes to load them. First, make sure you are only using the ones that you truly need. You’ll often find that Developers and untrained team members may have left Themes and Plugins operational that no longer serve your benefit. Second, if you are using a WordPress template, try to keep it simple and only use Plugins created by reputable WordPress sources that have been recently updated, such as Cornerstone 4.0.

Improve server response time: The optimal server response time is under 200ms and should be constant over multiple users. A response time beyond 200 ms is a sign that requires something to be fixed. To improve your server response time, you can either pay for new servers and equipment which could get expensive and still not solve the problem or you can look for performance bottlenecks like slow database queries, slow routing, or a lack of adequate memory and fix them.

Use a content distribution network: Content distribution networks (CDNs), also called content delivery networks, are networks of servers that work together to provide fast delivery of your site’s content. A CDN allows for the quick transfer of assets needed for loading Internet content including HTML pages, javascript files, stylesheets, images, and videos. While a CDN does not host content and can’t replace the need for proper web hosting, it does help cache content at the network edge, which improves your website performance.

Poor hosting location: the hosting company and server that you decide to use to store your website can have an impact on your site speed. Therefore, it is important you choose a host where all of your assets can be housed in one location and a plan that matches the needs of your website. If your data has to travel a significant distance to arrive where it is needed, this results in a high amount of network latency. For instance, if a website’s HTML and CSS files are hosted in a data center in Ohio, and its images are hosted in a data center in Florida, a user on the west coast will have to wait while all of these files travel thousands of miles to their device.

Bringing it All Together

Your site speed has a vital role in generating traffic. The factors that affect that traffic generation are interlinked with one another. If you find that your site is taking too long to load, don’t panic. We can help you to determine any factors that might be affecting that speed to increase your clientele, improve your user experience, retain existing users, and increase your conversion rate. 

Ready to streamline your site’s performance?

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The July 2021 Orange Report

The July 2021 Orange Report

by | Jul 13, 2021 | Adobe/Magento, Past Newsletters, PPC, Technology

July 2021 ORANGE REPORT

Solving Supply Shortages, Subscription Sales Models & more in the July 2021 Orange Report.

Marry Your Customers: Subscription Sales Lock up Long-Term Success

With the right eCommerce plan and platform you could add a new and lucrative sales model to your business: Subscription Sales

READ MORE

Stuck with a Supply Shortage? How to Keep Customers Happy During Disruptions

The threat of a disruptive crisis won’t ever go away, but there are precautions you can take to protect your customer from the impacts of the unexpected.

READ MORE

Cryptocurrency Potential: Loyal Users, Instant Payments and Low Fees

Cryptocurrency awareness and understanding could help forge a valuable opportunity for your business, today and into the future.

READ MORE

More Time is Needed; Google Delays Cookie Withdraw

On Thursday, June 24, 2021 Google announced they were delaying their plans to kill third-party tracking cookies in Chrome.

READ MORE

Marry Your Customers: Subscription Sales Lock up Long-Term Success

Marry Your Customers: Subscription Sales Lock up Long-Term Success

by | Jul 9, 2021 | Digital Marketing, eCommerce, Technology

Why do people get married? Love is the obvious answer, but a number of other pragmatic factors play into it, as well. You just realize it is the best fit for you in so many ways going forward, and you choose to formalize the long-term arrangement.

Long-term relationships driven by the same dynamics can similarly blossom between eCommerce vendors and their best customers. Those “marriages” come in the form of a  Subscription Sales Model.

Almost everyone recognizes this model, even if you don’t know it by name. Dollar Shave Club enjoys huge sales as a Subscription Sales business. So do dozens of other brands like BarkBox and Blue Apron.

You may already be having substantial eCommerce success. But do you know how to add on to your existing business by embracing this emerging, lucrative channel? With the right eCommerce platform in combination with the right expertise, it can be easier than you think.

Growth Through the Roof

Conceived of and executed properly, adding a Subscription Sales option for your customer base delivers efficiency and satisfaction to both seller and buyer. According to Zuora’s Subscription Economy Index, subscription business revenue has grown 437% over the last nine years. That kind of growth, made possible by improving eCommerce models and technology, only results from an idea whose time has come.

So how can you tap into that model from your current eCommerce efforts?

Build from Strength

The search for answers begins by identifying the core parts of your business where results are strong and opportunities are apparent for regular, recurring sales. Those areas produce proven demand, and they mark the sweet spot of opportunity in the market that you can build from. The fundamentals of the value of your product and what you offer that others can’t match become the foundation for Subscription Sales successes.

Adding a successful Subscription Sales component to your eCommerce menu can feel like a trip to the promised land – it becomes a recurring revenue stream that makes customers happy and, once operational, requires little additional management oversight.

Identifying Key Functions

Settling on a pricing model that works efficiently for you and appeals to your customers may be the biggest decision that will determine your success in this process. There is no “one size fits all” option. The four most-common Subscription Sales pricing models, according to ProfitWell include:

  • Fixed/flat-rate model
  • Tiered pricing model
  • Per unit/user model
  • Usage model

What choice you make that fits best with your business operations and the products and services you offer within that selection are your business – literally. You need to make these decisions, though, with an eye to what makes the arrangement easiest for your customers while at the same time not putting you in a position to have to completely reinvent your existing business operations.

Keeping Your House in Order

If you are up and running as an eCommerce merchant already, you have made arrangements to address essential business functions. Ideally, you want the decisions you are making while implementing  your Subscription Sales offering to be compatible with how you handle those functions currently, and also to fit in smoothly with the software platform that is the foundation for your eCommerce site.

Finding the right Subscription Sales model that will integrate with operational areas like inventory control, customer data management, billing and payment options will go a long way in determining just how much benefit this new arrangement will produce for you.As a sampling of the many ways these areas can interact and produce benefits for your business, Quora has identified nine key areas that all impact how you proceed. Reviewing these,  you’ll notice how interrelated they all are as the questions that underpin eCommerce in any form. Offering Subscription Sales gives you a chance to consider the relationships in these areas if they could be in optimal alignment so you could offer your best service levels to your best customers.

Making It eCommerce

Once you commit to pursuing a Subscription Sales offering, you’ll need to look at one final major question: How will this work from the perspective of how you are doing things now?

If your operation currently runs on a platform that is open source or an SAAS offering, you have options for taking that last step to joining the ranks of Subscription Sales providers. In Part Two of this blog, we’ll discuss what those options are and what factors can help you make the best decision for your continuing eCommerce success. 

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Cryptocurrency Potential: Loyal Users, Instant Payments and Low Fees

Cryptocurrency Potential: Loyal Users, Instant Payments and Low Fees

by | Jul 7, 2021 | Adobe/Magento, Digital Marketing, eCommerce, Technology

Interest in cryptocurrency is growing, and fast. With some major brands like Visa recently announcing their adoption of this digital payment method, it is getting harder to ignore the impact crypto and blockchain technology could have on your eCommerce business.

Whether you’re just starting to learn about cryptocurrency or exploring how to accept this method of payment in your online store, it is important to keep on top of the trend that is unfolding. After all, awareness and understanding could help forge a valuable opportunity for your business in the future.

While some retailers might be skeptical about accepting crypto as they see it as a risk to their business, some see it as an opportunity to increase their bottom line. In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits and drawbacks that cryptocurrency presents, while also taking a look at how to accept them as payment on your online store.

Before diving into the pros and cons, it is imperative to first know what cryptocurrency is and why it is growing in popularity around the globe.

What exactly is cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is decentralized digital money, based on blockchain technology. Unlike the U.S. Dollar or the Euro, there is no central authority, like banks or governments, that manages and maintains the value of a cryptocurrency. Instead, these tasks are broadly distributed among a cryptocurrency’s users via the internet; which is part of why it is growing in popularity with corporations around the globe.

The cryptocurrency that started them all, is the one you are probably the most familiar with, Bitcoin; which was created in 2009 in a bid to decentralize the financial sector. Up until 2011, it was the only cryptocurrency in operation, but there are now more than 5,000 different cryptocurrencies in worldwide circulation, according to CoinLore. Some of the most noteworthy ones you might want to be aware of include Ethereum, Litecoin, and the living meme Dogecoin.

Cryptocurrency and the technology behind it are gaining traction in the eCommerce industry, and fast. But what are the benefits you should be aware of when considering accepting this type of payment on your online store?

Key benefits for considering cryptocurrency

A lot of trends come and go, but crypto seems likely here to stay, in some form. Not only can it help your eCommerce business expand its customer base but it can also increase its target audience, streamline your customer experiences, and more.

  • Fast transactions + user checkout experience smoother: Blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrency, is a distributed ledger that allows for quicker, more direct transactions that can help streamline your business cash flow. And for consumers, the immediate processing of cryptocurrency means orders can be shipped instantaneously and arrive sooner. Let’s walk you through an example. You are considering purchasing an SUV from a dealership. If you want to pay for your new vehicle the conventional way with cash or a credit card, you would have to deal with a financial institution; which comes with a lot of potential frustrations and wait time. However, if you choose to pay with a cryptocurrency, not only is it convenient and secure, but there is no middle man, no hold on the transaction and the payment is transferred instantaneously. This is already happening at independent dealerships around the country as customers are paying in full for their vehicles, instantly with cryptocurrency. 
  • Increase in traffic + opportunity to widen target audience: While many people buy cryptocurrencies as an investment instead of an actual payment method, others love buying products with cryptocurrencies because of the lower costs associated, more secure checkout, and the ability to have full control over their funds. By embracing crypto transactions you can widen your target market to these buyers leading to an increase in new customer traffic. It will also make it easier if you are looking to expand globally since crypto is not tied to a specific country’s exchange rate. This allows you to sell to merchants no matter where they are in the world with a single digital standard.
  • Lower transaction fees compared to other options: The industry standard transaction fee from third-party gateways is normally 2.9% + $0.30. This fee is significantly reduced for cryptocurrencies to 1% if not lower; which is good news for you and your bottom line as it can help make your business more profitable.
  • Clean, secure data: Blockchain technology not only increases accuracy but also decreases fraud. Unlike most traditional financial institutions, crypto transactional and consumer data is never saved on a single centralized service making it very difficult to steal or counterfeit. Also, crypto transactions do not require customers to input personal identifying information, which reduces the risk of fraud in digital transactions. You might find this beneficial for your marketing efforts. It might also help to avoid wasted spending.
  • Crypto users are also very very loyal: The flexibility of having this payment option on your site enables customers to pay the way they want to, which provides a better all-around shopping experience and helps to increase conversion rates and reduce cart abandonment.
  • Rise in value: Some of you might see the volatility of cryptocurrencies as a risk, which we will go into more depth in the next section, whereas some might see it as an opportunity for growth. The pie graph below from CoinMarketCap is just one example of how quickly Bitcoin, one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, has risen in value over the last couple of years:

Potential Setbacks of Incorporating Cryptocurrency Are Low

Despite cryptocurrencies being the latest trend in the online retail sector, there are pitfalls and reasons to be skeptical.

  • Price volatility: We mentioned above that cryptocurrencies are currently on the rise in value, but the uncertainty of whether that upward trend will continue poses a risk for both businesses and consumers. In addition, if the value of a cryptocurrency has fluctuated since the time a consumer purchases and returns a product, things could get tricky.
  • Customer confusion: According to a survey by Cardify, only 17% of investors that have bought cryptocurrency “fully understand” the value and potential of cryptocurrency. Not only do customers not fully understand the value, but they don’t understand how to use them. For instance, most consumers see cryptocurrency as an investment instead of an exchangeable asset. This perception will start to shift itself as more companies start incorporating crypto as a payment option similar to Tesla and Visa.

Payment Gateways Options for Accepting Cryptocurrency on Your Site

If you are considering accepting cryptocurrency on your site, here are some options to think about:

Magento 2 Payment Processing Service Options: ShapeShift is the newest third-party service offered on Magento 2 that processes transactions on your behalf. It aims to provide a fast, private and convenient way of swapping cryptocurrencies. This payment method allows you to accept Bitcoins, Ethereum, Litecoin, and over 300 other digital currency options.

Shopify Payment Processing Service Option: BitPay automatically converts payments to a currency of your choice (eight currencies available) and sends them directly to your bank account. A couple of cons of using BitPay is that they charge a relatively high transaction fee of 1%; which you will not see with ShapeShift and they only accept Bitcoin.

BigCommerce is also looking into developing an app that accepts crypto. Be sure to keep an eye on their progress in the event it meets your needs.

Bringing it All Together

If you are looking to expand your market share while also offering your customers a faster and more secure way to pay for your products and services, cryptocurrency could be the answer.

Keeping up-to-date with this trend will help you to adapt your eCommerce strategy quickly and get ahead of the competition. Ready to take your eCommerce site to the next level and incorporate cryptocurrency as a digital payment option? Connect with one of our experts today to discuss your needs!

Get in Touch

Connect with one of our experts today to discuss your eCommerce needs!

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