Complete Guide on Using Recharge Payments for Ecommerce Subscriptions (Success Story Included)

The ecommerce subscriptions ecosystem has been growing rapidly across the world. 

As per Forbes, the global subscription ecommerce market size grew from $72.91 billion in 2021 to #120.04 billion in 2022, and is expected to grow at double the rate by the end of 2023, becoming a must-have for online businesses to grow sustainably by 2025. 

Our Shopify experts have been experiencing the growth of ecommerce subscriptions in the ecosystem too. From a business model that was initially implemented by only health and wellness brands, we have had the chance to work with brands across other industries as well - beauty and cosmetics, fashion and apparel, electronics, automobile, and many others. 

But setting up a subscription model is not easy. With so many nuances to take care of, you need to follow a methodical approach and the one Shopify app partner we trust for the same, is Recharge Payments. 

So in this blog, we’re doing a deep dive into what the app has to offer and why you should explore it for setting up the ecommerce subscription model. 

What is Recharge Payments? 

Recharge Payments is one of the best Shopify apps for ecommerce businesses. It is a leading subscriptions payments platform that is designed for merchants to set up and manage dynamic recurring billing across web and mobile.

They are known for not just simplifying the set up process of a subscription model, but also the collaterals required to make the model a success - a subscription landing page, automations for reminders, integrations with other Shopify apps, and more. 

What are the best features of Recharge Payments for eCommerce subscriptions? 

The best part about Recharge Payments is the fact that the Shopify app partner has accounted for all the stages of a consumer making a subscription purchase. They have a suite of features for customer acquisition, increasing average order value, decreasing subscriber churn, increasing lifetime value and subscription business management. 

Recharge Subscriptions has introduced a new features designed to help e-commerce businesses reduce churn and increase customer retention. 

• Retain: It's a tool to help you prevent loss of the customers. With advanced analytics and personalized engagement strategies, businesses can now proactively address customer concerns, offer tailored incentives, and keep their subscribers satisfied and engaged for longer periods. It includes Three tools:

Some of the key features our Shopify experts absolutely love include: 

• Custom checkout domain - Optimize the checkout process for products available on subscriptions with custom fields like subscription duration, discounts, and more. 
• Custom customer portal - Enable your customer to manage every aspect of their subscription orders with a branded portal. 
• Direct checkout links - Ease purchasing subscriptions with a URL that takes customers directly to cart with pre-populated product information and subscription interval. 
• Discount creation and management - Create and manage discounts to promote subscriptions and get insights on the best performing discount codes. 
• Media attribution - Identify the channels driving the most number of subscription purchases to optimize for higher ROI and ROAS. 
• Payment processor - Integrate with popular payment gateways, ensuring PCI compliance and complete encryption with regular audits. 
• Prepaids - Enable customers to make upfront payments for multiple orders with or without discounts on their subscriptions. 
• Product SKU and variant - Set subscriptions on specific products or collections, identify your bestsellers and low-selling/ canceled items and how it all impacts your revenue. 
• Subscription widget - Sell your subscriptions by promoting them on product pages with an easily customizable widget. 
• Translation - Customize text elements to localize the shopping experience offered to your subscription customers. 
• Bundles - Bundle multiple products together for one-time or subscription purchases; best for curated box or fixed items subscription model. 
• One-time products - Allow customers to include additional products to their existing subscription orders; can include exclusive items tailored to their interests. 
• Revenue KPI dashboard - Compare one-time purchases with subscription sales on your store via a comprehensive revenue dashboard. 
• Upsell and cross-sell - Encourage existing subscription customers to try new products with targeted product recommendations. 

• Subscription cancellation - List customized cancellation options and learn why customers cancel orders to mitigate future churn. 
• Provide incentives - Offer personalized benefits and offers to customers requesting cancellation to keep the subscription going. 
• Customer activity and cancellation metrics - Identify key customer journey milestones at which cancellations occur after checkout and take note of common reasons. 
• Customer notifications - Send transactional emails to customers at critical points - new subscription, before an upcoming charge and more. 
• Dunning - Alert customers about payment issues and enable them to automatically retry payments on a set schedule. 
• Magic links - Make managing subscriptions easy with a secure link custom to each customer that offers a one-click interface and passwordless login. 
• Pause subscriptions - Give customers an option to pause subscription orders for a set period of time over canceling them. 
• Customer overview dashboard - View information about your active and churned customers, including churn rate, number of all-time churned customers, average orders per customer, and more.
• Analytics and insights - Recharge Payments comes with a detailed analytics dashboard that includes key metrics on subscription orders, growth, contribution to overall sales and revenue, top sales channels, customer lifetime value and other growth metrics. 

How to use Recharge Payments to set up the eCommerce subscription model? 

While our Shopify experts are with you every step of the way, we do recommend following a couple of steps to ensure you cover all grounds: 

1. Understand the subscription model and its types 

First things first, ensure that you have a complete understanding of the ecommerce subscription model and its various types - access, replenishment, curation, build-a-box. Every ecommerce business must look into its unique value proposition, its products and what would benefit it the most. 

2. Identify your target audience and needs

Look into your customer analytics and segment your customers on the basis of their level and frequency of interaction with your online store. Take into account both micro and macro actions like wishlisting of items or the purchases they have made over a defined period of time. 

3. Identify products to offer on subscriptions 

It is important to note that not all products sell as subscriptions. Take a note of your product analytics to identify purchase patterns and preferences. The idea is to identify items that customers need on a recurring basis and how you can ease these purchases for them. 

4. Set the benefits and offers 

The next step is to identify what will appeal to your buyers when you sell products via a subscription model. This could be discounts or deals on the products when bought for a specific duration or benefits like discounted shipping. Remember to take into account your marketing and advertising costs as well as logistics before deciding on subscription offers and benefits. 

5. Create a subscription landing page

The one thing our Shopify experts recommend doing is making it easy for online shoppers to find what products subscriptions are available on. While you will have the subscription widget available on individual product pages or collections, we do recommend setting up a separate landing page that lists all the products it is available on, the discounts or benefits available and how easy it is to purchase subscriptions. 

6. Set up a marketing strategy 

Similar to the deals and discounts you create for seasonal sales and rope in all channels to promote them, create a marketing strategy to sell your subscriptions too. This means creating a comprehensive marketing strategy that uses both organic and paid channels to entice online shoppers into exploring the subscriptions available. 

7. Automated Customer Retention Campaigns

Recharge has introduced automated customer retention campaigns that target at-risk customers with personalized offers and incentives to reduce churn. These campaigns are driven by machine learning algorithms that predict customer behavior and suggest the best retention strategies. 

8. Monitor and optimize 

Don’t treat the subscription model as a set it and forget element on your store. Ensure you keep a close watch on the performance via the Recharge Payments dashboard, take note of insights and actionables, and optimize to meet customer needs, interests, preferences more proactively. 

XgenTech x Recharge Payments: Setting up the ecommerce subscription model for Transparent Labs 

We know how you follow our blog for actionable tips and examples. So instead of just explaining the features we love and laying out the steps you need to take to build a subscription model for your business, we also have an example - one we had the chance to work on. 

Meet Transparent Labs. 

Transparent Labs is an online store that offers a full suite of all-natural sports supplements created with science-backed ingredients. Their ecommerce subscription model is designed to make it simpler for consumers to keep up with their health regimes, routines and supplements. 

1. Subscription landing page 

Transparent Labs has a dedicated landing page setup to promote their subscription model. They have set up the page to highlight the benefits of taking the subscription on supplements - order total, shipping, delivery times and more. 

To ensure it does not get missed, they have also included it in the main menu for easy navigation to the page: 

2. Product recommendations 

They go one step further to boost the conversions from the subscription landing page. To tap into consumer psychology, they include their best sellers as product recommendations on the page - along with a quick summary of what each product is made for. 

3. Product categories 

While best sellers are a great way to initiate customer journeys, not every consumer may have the same preferences. This is why it is a good idea to also display all the other product categories you have the subscription model and benefits available on. Transparent Labs has done so on the basis of health goals. 

4. Ease of subscription 

They have also ensured that it is easy for online shoppers to make subscription purchases. The brand has streamlined the process to four easy steps, displaying that ease on the landing page as well. 

5. Custom subscriptions 

Another great element of the subscription model Transparent Labs has set up is giving buyers the ability to find their ideal supplement stack. They have a mini calculator and recommendation engine set up on the subscription landing page for the same. 

6. Ease of discovery and selection 

Choosing the right health supplements can be tough. That is why Transparent Labs has created easy drop-downs on the popular subscription bundles to help site visitors explore what’s included, without the back and forth between pages. 

7. Product page optimization 

They have also optimized individual product pages for ease of subscriptions. The upfront subscription pricing helps the visitor see how they benefit from subscribing over one-time purchases. 

8. Customer portal 

Transparent Labs has also set up a customer portal that buyers can easily log into to manage their subscription orders. This includes pausing, canceling, customizing and even rescheduling the subscription orders - all from one dashboard. 

9. Optimized checkout 

Subscription orders consist of more details per customer. Using Recharge Payments and its integration with the Shopify backend, they have set up an optimized checkout process. This includes offering the same payment and shipping options as on regular orders to make it easier for online shoppers. 

As a result, the subscription model offered by Transparent Labs is one of the most successful in the health and wellness industry. They have continually worked on optimizing the experience, products and benefits based on product and customer analytics, proactively adapting to the changing consumer needs. 

Ready to set up ecommerce subscriptions with Recharge Payments? 

Recharge Payments is clearly one of the most powerful subscriptions apps in the Shopify ecosystem. But to be able to make the most of it, you need to be able to understand the capabilities of each of these features in detail, the business objectives they serve and how to set them up.

This is where our team of Shopify experts come in. 

Ready to set up the subscription model on your Shopify store? 

Contact our experts today.