Looking to create a subscription website?
The greatest advantage of any subscription business is the recurring revenue. The subscription model ensures you a minimum fixed revenue even if you fail to land new sales.
This recurring revenue model or subscription system is highly enticing and inspires business owners to take advantage of it. A subscription business is not an impossible feat. Every product or service that you offer has the potential to be converted into a subscription item. So why let that golden opportunity go to waste?
So let’s look at everything regarding subscription models and how to create a subscription website with this article.
What are the advantages of a subscription website?
A subscription website is any site that offers a subscription-based product or service. Customers can purchase a subscription and then renew it in recurring intervals, sometimes – monthly/quarterly/yearly.
The biggest benefit of such a site is that you will get a guaranteed baseline income even if no new customer signs up for your subscription. Also, the subscription system creates an environment of trust that encourages customers to stay loyal to your brand for a longer period.
Let’s take a look at an example of a subscription store to understand this further. Note that, any store from clothing to healthcare services can be seamlessly converted into a subscription business. But for the sake of simplicity, let’s take a hypothetical coffee shop that delivers coffee to your doorstep every morning as an example here.
A person selecting that coffee shop will tend to stay with the business if they like what they offer. Let’s keep the quality of the product apart for now. If you give that customer better deals that encourage them to subscribe to the coffee, chances are that they will keep on choosing you. This would help you make long-term customers and increases the lifetime value of each user.
The other main reason why a user might choose a subscription-based coffee service is that they don’t have to buy it each day. You can pay for it all at once and receive the goods without any hassles. This would help considerably reduce the time and effort associated with the purchase process.
Also, there is a simple thing – recurring customers make the most referrals. The word of mouth marketing is a highly effective and trustworthy form of marketing that could help your brand in the long run.
Types of subscription businesses
The convenience and the low-risk nature of subscription businesses are driving both customers and business owners toward subscription services. However, you would need to have a clear understanding of the market and the prevalent subscription types before dipping your toes in the water.
The following are some of the prominent subscription types in the market at play.
Software
In recent years, we have seen a significant shift from software as a product to software as a service (SaaS). This replaced the one-time fees to purchase software with a subscription system. Here the customers need to pay a recurring subscription fee to keep on using the software. A popular example of subscription-based software is Netflix.
Membership Sites
A membership site is a gated site that includes members-only content. Only the members of the site who pay a recurring subscription would only be allowed to access the content published on that site. The New York Times (nytimes.com) is a good example of a membership site.
Subscription Boxes
Subscription boxes are niche products that would be recurringly delivered to the subscribers. A subscription box can have anything from makeup to fresh fruits based on the demands of the customer. Take a look at this article on starting a subscription box service in WooCommerce to know more.
eCommerce
Not all eCommerce stores sell subscriptions, however, that doesn’t mean that you cannot sell subscriptions with eCommerce. Most of the items that you need on a regular basis can be purchased through a subscription scheme. For example, coffee beans, paper towels, etc. Amazon and eBay are some of the most popular eCommerce websites in the world.
How to create a subscription website?
Building a subscription store may seem like a lot of work, but it can be completed in just a few steps.
Using the right tools can help you a lot while building a subscription website even if you are not so tech-savvy.
Step 1: Identify the kind of subscription website that you are building
As discussed earlier, there are several different types of subscription websites such as members-only, software, and more. Moreover, there are other kinds of subscription websites such as the ones selling tiered subscriptions (providing access to different levels of content based on the subscription opted by the customer.
Identify what kind of subscription you want to sell. The kind of website you develop depends on what functionalities you want and this in turn depends on what you want to sell.
Once that is done, create a clear understanding of what you want to do. These are some of the basic questions you should have an answer to understand what you should do.
- Who will be your target audience
- How will they know about the subscription
- How can you make a profit out of this system
- Why is that product relevant
- What does the product do
Step 2: Decide on the platform
Subscription websites can be built on several platforms such as WordPress, Shopify, Joomla, Drupal, etc. Identify and select the best platform tailored to your specific needs so that you can build the website easily.
Some of the key requirements of the platform to create a subscription website include
- Strong features that help with a membership management
- A platform where you can make your content restricted or enable content dripping
- Extensive integrations, especially with payment gateways, to make website management as smooth and effortless as possible
WordPress is one of the most popular website builders. It is entirely free to install and use. WooCommerce, the world’s biggest eCommerce platform with a market share of 36.68%, is also built on top of WordPress. The WooCommerce plugin is also available for free and offers the basic functionalities essential for setting up a functional eCommerce website.
However, you will need to use additional extensions to make the website suitable for offering subscription products. The best economical and feature-rich solution for this is the WebToffee subscriptions for WooCommerce plugin. It is one of the top-performing subscription extensions and supports everything from subscription synchronization to automatic renewals.
Step 3: Build the subscription website
Build the website on the platform you choose. Check out the documentation of the platform to ensure that you are not making any errors in the process.
Add a signup page, publish all the content and product-related information, and make the checkout process smoother to ensure higher conversion rates.
Follow the instructions provided in this video to build a website with WordPress and WooCommerce.
Now to add subscription capabilities to the website, follow the instructions in this video.
Step 4: Decide on the subscription pricing
This is the most crucial step in setting up your subscription website. You will need to do thorough research on your target audience, competitor products, and their pricing to fix a subscription rate that works for you and your customers.
Consider the subscription pricing to trials and optimize it in a way that best suits your business. Just keep in mind that pricing is extremely volatile and it may need some fine-tuning to hit the sweet spot.
Also, if possible, offer free sign-ups, free trials, or other features to customers. This can encourage them to try out your product. Also, enabling recurring subscription payment options can reduce the risk of fallouts.
Step 5: Monitor the website performance
Monitor your website for speed, accessibility, and ease of use to better understand the customer experience. If your site underperforms or is laggy, the resulting increase in the churn rate can impact your bottom line.
Also Read: 8 Key Metrics to Track for a Successful Subscription Business
An introduction to the WebToffee WooCommerce Subscription plugin
If you are using WordPress to create a subscription website, you would need a WooCommerce subscription plugin to help you enable subscription capabilities on the site. One of the best plugins available for this purpose is the WebToffee WooCommerce Subscription plugin.
The plugin offers everything you need to create subscription products on the store and has support for several payment gateways that accepts recurring payments.
Some of the key features of the plugin include,
- Support for simple and variable subscription products
- Free trial
- Custom renewal intervals
- Support for recurring discount coupons
- Sign-up fees
- Drip download
- Subscription pro-ration
- Synchronize WooCommerce subscription
- Subscription renewal reminders for customers
- Support for multiple payment gateways that accept recurring payments
This plugin when compared with its WooCommerce counterpart is much more economical and offers features that are actually useful to the customers. Take a look at the comparison between the two WooCommerce subscription plugins to know more.
Last words
One-time purchases are a good way to earn sales, but recurring subscriptions are an even better way to improve your revenue. Recurring subscriptions ensure continued revenue and stable growth for your business. Therefore, investing in a subscription website is a great idea.
The site can be built on any platform that you need. One such suitable platform is WordPress. The CMS software is completely free to use and is one of the most popular website builders across the globe.
You can use the WebToffee Subscription plugin for WooCommerce is set up a subscription site on WordPress. The plugin offers all features that a subscription plugin needs. So waste no time, start to create a subscription website for your own!
