Wix eCommerce | How to Maximize Product Subscriptions & Increase Sales

Hi everyone and welcome to WIX E Commerce School. I'm your host Brett Harrelson and today we're going to be talking about how to maximize product subscriptions and increase sales. Joining us from WIX is Asaf and Olga. Welcome you two. Before we jump in, let's do some intros. First Olga, will you tell us a little bit about you and what you do for wix?

Sure. So hi everyone, I'm Olga and I'm a product manager in WIX stores. And I'm really happy to be here with you today.

We're super glad to have you and thank you for being here. Asaf, tell us, tell us a little about you.

Yeah, so hi. So my name is Asaf and I lead the marketing for stores which means typically that Olga and her colleagues give us excellent features and we market them both to existing users and use them as enticing things to lure in new merchants.

Fantastic. So I want to say thanks to both of you for coming and also thanks to everybody attending. This is fantastic and we're excited. So today let's kind of, let's talk a little bit about what you can expect from this week's ecommerce school today. Again the topic is how to maximize product subscriptions and increase sales. So we really want to focus on how to sell your products as subscription bundles, which is is new and increase order totals, foster customer loyalty and of course we can't have a fantastic panel without some Q and A. So we'll be getting to that as well. So that's the agenda, Olga, it's a lot. Where do you recommend we start? Actually before we start, let's have a brief overview of wix. For those of you who may not know, we have 160, 165 million users worldwide, 4.5 million premium users, 500,000 plus active stores. We're in over 190 countries and 1,000 plus innovative features. So that's fantastic. But Olga, let's talk a little bit about E Com and subscriptions. Where should we start?

Okay, so I'm going to show you soon our new subscriptions feature, the product subscriptions. But before we dive in, and I know you're all waiting for it, I want to talk a little bit about the subscription in. So it all started with subscription startups like Blue Apron providing cooked meals and the Dollar Shape Club providing razors and grooming products. And then those startups really grew and this phenomenal growth brought in all the established brands basically. So companies like Procter and Gamble created the Gillette on demand. And companies like Sephora created the Sephora Playbox and many more established companies. And just last year alone we can hear about most of the known brands that we know all creating new subscription products. So Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Nike, Banana Republic and so much more. So it's really becoming very, very trendy. $5 billion. I want you to all look at this huge figure and this is the value of the E Comm subscription market. And with over 40 million monthly visits to subscription box websites, this industry is experiencing a growth of over 100% every year. So basically today we are calling you to join this booming industry. So first, before we actually look at this feature, I want to ask you, why should you even sell subscriptions apart from this big industry that you've just seen and all the financial reasons? So first it will help you to enhance your customer loyalty because now you're not selling to one customer one time. You're actually increasing the customer lifetime value and selling to the same customer over a longer period of time. And you all know obviously that acquiring a new customer is much more expensive than selling to your own customers that you already know. And this will help you to create a steady cash flow. And it's important, especially in times like this today with COVID 19, but other crisis as well. It will make you more resilient having this steady cash flow. You're starting every week or every month with already made orders without sending anything new. So who can use this feature? As Brett said, it's made for weak store users. So you have to have a weak store app installed on your website and you can use it for two main use cases. So the first one is curation boxes. Boxes that include different products that you sell and ship to your customers every month or every week. It could be themed with themes like cosmetics, beauty, fashion, toys, books, home decor, anything that you can think of. And the second use case is basically recurring orders. So you're selling the same product and shipping it to your customer every week or month. So this can be used for products like coffee, razors, eye lenses, pet food and lots of more products. So I'm going to show you now a demo of how this feature works. We will start with setting up subscription. Then we'll move to how it appears on the stove font and how to design it and adjust the design to your needs. And then we'll move to how to manage and fulfill the subscription orders that you've got. So in order to set up a subscription, you need to go into your dashboard, into Your back office and open your product list. Now you can create a new product or enter an existing product that you already have. I'll enter this monthly succulent product as any product. You need to put in the name, images, product info, description, of course, and the description should be very clear if you need any info sections or product options like size or color. And at the very bottom you have a new card called Subscriptions and you can click on create a subscription. And now you basically put in all the subscription details. So you can give it a name. You have to give it a name, an optional tagline. So I'm calling this subscription. Nice to meet you. Cancel anytime. I'm choosing a monthly subscription. So the frequency can be either weekly, monthly or yearly. And the duration will determine how long it will be valid. So frequency determines when you're charging and shipping goods to your customers. So this subscription is monthly and until the customer decides to cancel. And I can give it a discount compared to the base price of the product. And I'll show you how it looks. So, so here I have the subscription that I just created and I can create multiple subscription options for the same product. So I'll create.

I was actually about to ask you that, Olga. And by the way, for those who are just tuning in, two quick things if you have started for cutting you off, two quick questions. If you are just now tuning in, it is being recorded. And also if you have questions, we do have a Q and A coming at the end, so go ahead and drop them. So, yeah, so you can have multiple subscriptions here, right, Olga?

Yeah, so you can have one if you just need one, or multiple options. And I'll show you how to add those options. So now I'm adding another option, also monthly, but this time for six months. And I want to give my customers a little incentive to buy a longer subscription. So I'll give a 5% discount. And I put in the discount right here. And now you can see I have two options, either monthly auto renewal or monthly for six months can add more. So I added another one for 12 months. You can also edit this after I add. So if I want a custom duration, perhaps 18 months, anything is possible here.

I see that, by the way, and I like that. So there's multiple options for this because that's actually Janelle's question. So you could do three months, six months, there's a lot of options there, right?

Yeah, up to six options per product. And also you can decide whether you're selling this product just on a subscription basis. Or also for a one time purchase. So if you're selling a curation box like a beauty box, you would probably only sell it by subscription. But if you're selling coffee, then the same coffee bag, you can sell it in the same product page either by subscription or on a one time purchase and we'll see soon how it looks. So I'm going forward to the live site now and how your customers will experience what you just created. And this is all out of the box, so I haven't made any adjustments yet. So I created those three products and we'll see the monthly succulent that we just added subscriptions to. This is the product page and you can see all the subscription options that we've added those three. I also added the related items gallery at the bottom with other items I want to promote because maybe my customers won't purchase this, but they will like this better. So it's a great way to upsell.

Olga, how would this look? Is it a different look if the one time purchase is turned on? How might that look?

So let's have a look. This monthly mix I did turn on one time purchase for so you can see it appears just above or under the subscription options. If I choose the one time purchase then I have the add to cart button. I can add here fast checkout button as well, like the buy now button. But if I'm choosing one time purchase, it's a regular purchase of the product, it's not a subscription. If I'm one of the options then it changes to subscribe now and I'll move to checkout. This is all out of the box. I didn't design here anything at the checkout, but I'm seeing the price per month and all the subscription details. I will place the order and I've landed in the thank you page. And you see I have some adjusted text here as well. So thank you for subscribing instead of thank you for your order and all the details of this subscription.

Now I've seen a couple questions fly by and I think one's really interesting is which payment providers support recurring payments.

Okay, so we have three providers supported for recurring payments. Those are PayPal, Stripe and Wix Payments.

Okay, and for those who may not be familiar with WIX payments, can you tell us what WIX Payments is?

Yeah. So it's the internal payment solution made by wix and it basically supports charging your customers with any credit card or debit card. So if you're not familiar yet, you're welcome to go to Your dashboard under Accept Payments in the settings and you can learn all about it.

Awesome. Thank you.

So you've seen how it looks on the live site and how your customers will experience it, but perhaps you want to adjust some of the design. So now I'm going to the editor and in the editor let's go to the product page and you see the same plans that I've created here. And you can go to the app settings, to the product page settings, clicking here on settings. And perhaps I want to remove this quantity field because it's not really relevant for a subscription of this kind. So I can uncheck quantity, for example, and it will disappear. This is general, not just full subscription products. I can also control the text of the button. So I'll change here instead of subscribe. Now perhaps I want to just write subscribe. And maybe I want to change the button so I can change the color from black to brown or and this is a nice option, maybe I want to put the one time purchase last instead of first so I can switch it using this setting here. And I've shown you the product page. But actually those products with subscriptions behave like any products on the editor. So you can show them in any product gallery. You can put them in the all products collection or in a specific collection just for your subscription products. You can also use the product widget and connect it to a specific product that have subscriptions if you want. Or you can even use the add to cart button, change the text to subscribe and connect it to a subscription button. And then you can create your own elements and not the predefined elements that we offer. So this is how you design your subscription site. And let's say now I got a purchase, so someone actually purchased my subscription. Where would I see it? So I'll go to the order list. And I have here a lot of orders. So if I'm fulfilling my subscription orders, let's say on the first of the month, all the subscriptions, I can make some filtering. So I'll click on the more filters, it opens the filter panel and I can filter only orders with subscription, for example, or maybe I want to see only products with a specific product. So for example, this monthly succulent and I'll get into the order itself. So you can see here, this is the first order out of six because I purchased the six month subscription order number one of six. And it's important to explain here that this subscription will create an order every month, six, six orders in total. And each of those orders are individual. So each of those I need to fulfill, I need to ship the goods to my customer. So each order created after a successful billing and then I can actually fulfill it, I can add tracking number, I can create a shipping label if I need an invoice or a refund, any of those orders are manageable as regular orders. And if I need to see the subscription details itself, so I can click here on the view subscription and I'll get to the subscription page and here I can see the frequency, how much payments I've got left, what's the next payment date? If I want, I can cancel the subscription. And what it will do is it will cancel all future billing and like charges of this subscription. So I have one, but number two and on will not be created.

But that's the merchant view. Is it possible for. How does can customers cancel their subscriptions too? Because that was a question that just someone asked.

Yeah. So currently it's not possible for the customer to cancel it on its own. He has to contact the merchant and the merchant will cancel that. But we're working on a new feature. It will be called my subscription and it will be under the members area in the store font. And from there, if the merchant chooses using a setting to allow his customers to cancel, it will show there. So this is now in process and it's coming soon.

Thank you.

Also, you can edit here the shipping details of the subscription. So if my customer moved, the next order will be created with the updated shipping address. So I've shown you how it works. And before we get to the Q and A session, which is the most interesting one, I want to show you some tips and insights about how to build trust using subscriptions or when you selling subscriptions. So the first thing to take into account is that your customers want to know how it works. It's not trivial for them. So make sure to create a dedicated section or even some details on the product page and describe the process to them. Like when you're delivering, what are the dates, what are the options, they can choose from all. The process is really important for them to grasp it as trustworthy. And the second element is what's in the box. So it's very popular to create those mystery boxes and surprise boxes, but it's really important to help your customers, your future customers, imagine what they will actually get. Like help them imagine, even if it's a surprise, you don't want to show the real image of the product. So describe it in a general way, maybe show previous boxes that you've already sent and it will help them understand what's in the box. Another important thing is creating multiple options for your subscription. So if you're using auto renewal subscriptions, some customers find it kind of intimidating because they're afraid to get stuck with this auto renewal and they prefer limited durations like three months, six months. So it's okay to sell auto renewal, but perhaps provide another option for those users for those customers and be very specific about delivery dates. So if you're shipping always on the first of the month, let them know that because it's a monthly subscription and they should be aware of the scheduling and even give a clear example like what happens if they place their order until this date or after this date. And some general tips that I assume will be pretty obvious to most of you, but it's still important to mention use a lot of product images. It's really important like just one is not enough. And also use quality images and you can use the WIX Photo Studio to help you improve the quality of your images. Tell your story, create an About Us pages. It really helps creating a more authentic store and a more authentic subscription product. And last and you all know about this, but create social proof so customers attract more customers. Showcase images and videos of customers who already bought your subscription box. Show how they open their boxes. Do some unboxing videos. This will really help the next customers to purchase it and show testimonials and reviews. But don't make the reviews, put real reviews. So we have some news. This is not available yet but we are also launching two new templates specifically for subscriptions. It will be launched in the editor soon, one which is themed with a beauty box and the other for coffee subscription and they will be all set with all the subscription functionality in the back ready to use. So that's all from me and now I can't wait to hear your questions.

Well thank you so much for this and there's been a lot of great questions and I'm going to try to jump to them as quickly as possible. Tal asks a great question. What's the difference between this and pricing plans?

So we have pricing plans in Wix for a few years now and it's a great question. Pricing plans is more used for selling memberships, access to services and access to content. And product subscriptions are used to sell physical goods. So if you need to collect the shipping address during the checkout and if you need an order to fulfill then it means you need to use the product subscriptions. But if you're selling Your like a gym membership for example, or you're selling some content, then pricing plans would be better.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense to me. Thank you for that. So by the way, this is Q and A. So if anyone has any questions, now's the time to ask them because I'm going to try to rapid fire as fast as I can. Here's another great question. If someone signs up for a product subscription, how can they change their preferences preferences on the product later?

So this is not available yet. Once you place an order with a subscription product, this will be the product that will stay for all the orders coming out of this subscription. But we are working on this and it will be available soon.

Perfect. Liz is excited and Liz, we're excited you're excited. Here's another question. Asaf, I'm going to direct this one to you. Someone's asking a question about what can they do to get more sales on their e commerce shop? What are some tips that you might throw out for those who are trying to drive sales on their shop?

Right. So it's a great question and every merchant is struggling with it. Even the bigger ones are always after more sales. So especially at the beginning, make sure you are absolutely clear in what you're offering. We call it the clarity of concept. So be sure that the second a visitor lands on your site or online store, they know what you're selling, who you are and give them a clear call to action so they can immediately go and start browsing the products. You can send them to collections or specifically to a featured product. Make sure to have one single clear call to action. Probably the best way to do it is as you finish building up your storefront, put your mobile phone, go look up your store and give it to a friend of yours or someone from your family and ask them how easy it was for them to navigate. Most of your shopping is going to come from mobile, so be sure to make it, you know, mobile perfect. And then ask the people who you sort of asked to run through this process and question them and really, you know, ask for honest answers. How easy was it for them to navigate, to understand what they do and eventually to shop?

That's a detailed answer and a great answer, Assaf. So I hope that was. Everybody understands that. That's fantastic. So thank you. I'm going to grab one real quick. This is actually a really great question that Doug asks. Can he offer annual or and or monthly pricing plans here?

Annual or?

Yeah, both. Either one. Annual or monthly?

Yeah. So we have several options to Set up for your product subscription. You can do either weekly, monthly or annual and you can set up any duration. So if it's weekly, you can set up for example, five weeks, 12 weeks, whatever. Same with months and years. So 12 years is also possible for a subscription.

Wow, that's quite an investment. Asaf, I want to. I've got another follow up to what you said earlier, if you don't mind me asking this. It's what are some tips for getting potential customers to to complete and pay for items in the cart? Are there any tips where maybe you do get a visitor they almost check out but don't. What are some things someone can do there?

So first off, it happens a lot. Four out of five carts remain abandoned, which means only about 20% of the purchase process gets completed. One absolutely critical e commerce feature is the abandoned cart recovery. That's an automation you can set up to send an email to visitors who have abandoned your cart and have in the process gave you their email. This is very effective because it is triggered automatically. I mean the one time setup cost is a few minutes and the return on investment is huge because it can recover between 5 and 10%. So that's a huge increase on those 20% who do convert.

So that's interesting because I've had a couple follow ups to that as well. People have traffic or they'll abandon the card or they won't actually follow through. So those are some really interesting tips. So thank you for that. Those great questions from, from our audience. So here's another question and Clara asks this one. It's a good question. So let's see. Can you use subscriptions for monthly written documents that are not physically shipped? So maybe can you do a digital subscription of some sort? Is that possible?

So currently a subscription is only possible to set up on physical products. There are ways to sell access to digital files using pricing plans, actually. So one way would be to sell a pricing plan, a recurring payment that will give you access to restricted pages and you can limit those pages only to be visible to the people who purchase this subscription. And on this page you can put some content. So the content can be videos or text. Anything that you would put in a file can be actually online on those pages. So that's another way to use pricing tasks.

Great, thank you for that. So that actually answered a handful of questions. Brittany's got a great question here too I'm going to toss on to the team here. How can you charge for shipping if you're using the subscription function? Or how does Shipping work with this.

So shipping works with subscription just like they work with any regular checkout, any regular purchase. You can set up your shipping rules or rates in your back office using going to settings and then scrolling store shipping. You can set up different rates to different regions. So for example, I can have free shipping to a certain region and then $10 on other regions. I can also set up shipping by weight or different rates to different products or product groups. So you set it up from your dashboard and then it applies to the products that you choose. So you can include in these rules also substantial products and it will apply on all of the orders created from this subscription. So if you have six monthly shippings of this subscription box, for example, you will pay the same shipping rate to all of those.

And free shipping by the way is an excellent motivator for people to complete their purchase process. I think if you guys are a little bit hesitant in terms of profitability, you can increase your pricing just a little bit and offer free shipping. People respond better to that than lower price and the shipping as an add on.

Awesome addition.

If you do use free shipping, please put it as clear as possible on your website. On your product page you can use a banner, anything to really highlight this great sale.

Great advice. Awesome. Thanks both of you. Great question here. Is there a library of instructions that the audience can go back and review? I'll actually take that one actually. We have amazing resources in the WIX Help center and also specifically for Ecom there is a WIX EECOM site and lots of features and info there. There's the WIX E Commerce blog, obviously the WIX E Commerce school. So there are. There's a litany of resources available. Maybe we can get a link dropped. Olga, I've got another one for you. I like putting you on the spot. This is a really interesting question. How do you integrate subscriptions with the members only platform that has benefits for members only?

Great question and I think it would be useful for many of our users. So if you're looking to sell product subscriptions only to your members, meaning you want your customer to log in or sign up first and only then to actually see the subscription products. So you can create pages on your editor and restrict those pages only to members. We have an article in our knowledge base explaining just how to do that and we can maybe push in the comments, the link and then on this page you can just show a product gallery showing your subscription products or put a product widget, any store element on this page that will only be visible to members. So if I come to the site, I need to first sign in and then this page is visible to me.

Awesome. Go ahead.

ASAD benefits to providing incentives for people to join in as members, but I want to challenge that on subscriptions specifically. I think subscriptions, as Olga mentioned at the beginning, because they represent a much higher lifetime value, it allows you to increase the bids or the amount you spend on advertising, because once you get a single purchase, you actually get 12 of them or six. Depends on the length or the duration of the subscription. So I would definitely not try to hide it behind walls and I would want to expose it to as many people, especially if I'm going into social media, Facebook, Google, wherever I want to advertise. I definitely would test advertising for subscriptions.

Asaf let me kind of follow up with that. What are some examples of products or services that could be used to increase sales by using subscriptions?

So a lot depends on what you're offering, but some of it is being creative on how you package it. For example, we saw some of those loot crates before. There was nothing special about it. It's just taking a few of the games or the.