One of the most attractive business models in the eCommerce industry today is subscriptions. According to a survey compiled by McKinsey & Company, the online subscription market amounts to around $2.6 billion, with 15% of all online shoppers subscribing to a product or a service.
Over the last few years, we’ve helped many online merchants set up, launch and maintain successful subscription models for many different kinds of products and services – from online content to dog food, specialty knives, and even underwear!
We’ve noticed one of the most reliable and sturdy ways of implementing subscriptions on Shopify consistently is by using the Bold Subscriptions app.
Besides its ease of use and flexibility, Bold provides a set of tools to customize the look and feel of your subscriptions and even provides an API to integrate its features with third-party apps.
Below are 3 of our favorite implementations of Bold Subscriptions:
1. Get the right combination of underwear every month
Have you ever wanted to find the right variety of underwear sent to you every month? Knickey does just that. Using Bold Subscriptions, we helped customize the Shopify Product Template to allow customers to answer a series of questions on the kind of materials, colors, and sizes of underwear. So, any client can subscribe and select the perfect combination of underwear to be delivered every month.
Now if only they had a men’s version of their subscriptions so I can also get my knickers in a bunch… monthly!
2. Pet food with discounts on different subscriptions
When we first started working with WeFeedRaw we noticed the quality of pet food they offer immediately and wanted an online solution for their customers that matched their product. Their customers were able to fill out an interactive questionnaire to determine what subscription would be the best for the client. It worked well, but WeFeedRaw wanted to reward customers who commit to longer periods of time feeding great quality food to best friends at home!
By implementing different products linked to their subscriptions, each with their own price, we customized the Product Template in Shopify and linked with the questionnaire, so the right subscription would be available to the client based on different criteria.
With Bold Subscriptions taking care of the heavy lifting, clients can now get the right subscription and discount they deserve for treating their pets like the total champions they are!
3. Knives for VIP customers
What do you do when you need to keep abreast of the latest trends in knives and other hunting gear needs? You subscribe to Miami’s own Blade City’s VIP program of course!
Blade City’s VIP program uses Bold Subscriptions and has a set of specific requirements: allow the client to subscribe to a VIP program when purchasing a single select product, as well as assign a customer tag upon purchase.
To implement, we modified the Product Template to have a checkbox which would automatically add a corresponding VIP subscription product when purchasing select gear.
Then using Shopify’s webhooks, we captured an order after payment and assigned the customer a VIP tag so they can now get access to special pricing and other promotions. And just like that, we cut the user’s purchase time and administrative tasks in less than half!
To wrap it up…
After hundreds of projects implemented, we’ve noticed every subscription business is different and every implementation is unique. But, they all share a core set of essential requirements:
Security, ability to easily set up different levels of subscriptions, discounts, trial subscription models (e.g. first month free), recurring payments, etc.
All in all, Bold Subscriptions will give you all you need to launch a successful online subscription business. The question now is: what will you offer?
This article was originally published by our friends at Bold Commerce.
