Subscription Engineer#3: Subscription blueprint

Last time we spoke about choosing the right solution for your business but what kind of functionality should it have? That's why today we are going to talk about the nuts and bolts of subscription service.

Let's start simple and consider basic subscription scenario when customer:

• Visits your website
• Registers
• Enters payment details
• Subscribes
• Profit!

Sounds pretty easy, right? So far yes, but let's think about what else we might need based on various needs.

First, registration and login. You might think of:

• Guest account
• Social logins
• Login using phone numbers

Still pretty simple but now we are getting to the payment page and here comes my favorite, most juicy part because this is where you will make your revenue. So, let's list and discuss things you need here:

• Various subscription plans - that actually requires a/b test because having multiple plans might lower the conversion
• Discounts - absolute, percentage, second month free, free trials
• Various payment options - credit card, paypal, amazon pay, ApplePay, GooglePay, Buy Now Pay Later solutions like Klarna
• Address auto complete/address validation because you don't want to ship twice to the same customer on your own expense
• Anti-fraud - it's actually crazy how big is the fraud problem right now, so don't even think of not having an anti-fraud solution

But that's not it. Because when customers subscribe they get to the Thank you page and this is a great place to do some sort of upsale. So what can we have here:

• Upgrade to a different plan
• Various subscription addons (for example, at Scentbird we offer a Candle of the month)
• Referral program

Ok, that was a lot but our customer is not even on the website and we also didn't cover an important piece of functionality that I believe makes subscription businesses unique - personalization. I honestly think that the time of "one box for everyone" has gone and now companies should allow their customers to get what they want. There is a box for everything nowadays and if you don't offer customization but your competitors do then, well, good luck with that.

So, when it comes down to personalization there are several approaches here:

• Subscribe and save, so you get an item you want on a regular basis (think of supplements)
• Surprise box based customized based on your needs (fashion)
• Customers customize each box (Netflix-like approach with a queue that defines a product for each month, that's what we do at Scentbird)

So in order to be better in personalization you need to be better in discovery because people on your website need to know your offering. So here comes:

• Catalogs with filters - bestsellers, new, filter by brand or unique properties (in case of Scentbird - perfume notes, tags, fragrance families)
• Search widget that can work with typos, show alternative for something that is out of stock or for products you don't carry
• Product page with good pictures, descriptions and various User Generated Content like reviews
• Clean navigation on the website so people don't get lost

And last but not least - account managements. You might think that's simple and is not worth of attention but think about your own experience. How many times you were frustrated when you were not able easily cancel subscription, update payment method or shipping address. I had such an experience last week when I had to call Customer Support, hang for 20 mins on the line in order to update my credit card number for the existing order. On top of that my card was stolen next day. And that's not a small company, it's a large furniture business. So here is what you need to consider:

• Manage subscription (upgrade/downgrade, pause, skip, cancel)
• Update payment method
• Change shipping address
• Update personal details
• See order history
• See tracking information for orders

We did it, right? No, we are far from it because frontstore is just tip of the iceberg and now let's talk just a bit about backend and back office. First, there are some things that operate invisibly but you still need them :

• Recurrent charges and dunning logic - it's a big differentiator for payment services because the better they recover customers the better your business feels
• Communication - transactional and marketing emails; you need first to send things like invoices, tracking numbers and second for promotions, offerings and other stuff. And don't forget about? multiple channels like text, WhatsApp, push notifications
• Product analytics - you need to know what works and doesn't work on your website, run a/b tests and so on
• Business analytics - churn, LTV, cohort analysis, plan performance, etc. This is critical if you want your business to grow

I'll cover each of these topics separately because they definitely deserve that.

And now to the back office. It's the least sexier area than the frontstore but it's critical to run your business. Here I can select 3 big systems:

• CRM for your Customer Support/Experience
• CMS for your marketing and biz dev
• WMS for operations team

Each of these systems will be covered separately lately because it should have certain features critical for subscriptions.

So here is final version but again it's just birds eyes view and requires deeper dive to see how it works. Happy Tuesday!