How To Set Up A Subscription Service Wordpress

Subscription box services are popular among consumers today. Hellosubscription.com lists more than 5,000 subscription services selling everything from sneakers to vaping supplies. It'southward no surprise. These services are convenient, cost-saving, and personalized. Hither are some quick subscription box stats from a 2018 McKinsey study:

• 15% of online shoppers have signed upwardly for a subscription box service
• Near popular among younger, flush urbanites
• Sales in 2016 were $2.6 billion, upwards from $57.0 million in 2011
• Women make upwards 60% of all subscribers
• Well-nigh 35% of subscribers have 3 or more subscriptions

What Is a Subscription Box Service?

Subscription box services send their subscribers products, services, or sectional content at specified intervals (usually monthly) in commutation for a recurring payment. Subscription services fall into 3 wide categories: replenishment, curation, and access.

• Replenishment subscriptions send products that customers need to supercede on a recurring basis (e.thou., beauty products, razors).
• Curation subscriptions offer customers more than just products. They strive to surprise and delight them with new offerings personalized for them. (eastward.grand., manner, dog toys, tea).
• Admission subscriptions give customers low prices, membership, perks, and special admission. (e.g., Walmart's Beauty Box and Amazon's Subscribe & Save)

Some eCommerce platforms let you lot hands spin upward a subscription box service for a monthly fee, but they don't give you the flexibility to customize your site.

Other subscription services like Patreon are popular amongst artists and influencers who offering exclusive content to channel subscribers, but they speedily eat abroad at your profits with high transaction fees and monthly charges.

However, if you already have a WordPress site, the WooCommerce plugin is flexible, free, and piece of cake to install. Here are the steps to starting your own subscription box service with WooCommerce.

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Step 1: Choose a WordPress Theme

If you don't accept a WordPress site yet, find 1 with WooCommerce integration similar Astra, which is a free theme. Of course, you can selection whatever theme yous want, just make sure your theme has these features:

• Responsive design
• WooCommerce integration
• Layout and color customization
• Make clean, simple interface
• Loads speedily

Pace two: Download the WooCommerce Plugin

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that transforms your site into a powerful eCommerce platform. Like WordPress itself, WooCommerce is open-source, which means information technology's flexible and customizable. No thing what subscription box product yous're selling, you tin can use WooCommerce extensions to adjust your marketing and sales. Follow these steps on how to add a WooCommerce store to your WordPress blog.

Of course, if you employ our Managed WooCommerce Hosting plans, you don't need to practice this step; you can skip information technology completely.

Step 3: Add Subscription Functionality

You need a mode to manage your subscriptions and collect recurring payments. I highly recommend using the Subscription extension from Prospress to set up automatic payments through multiple payment gateways like PayPal or Stripe. You demand a subscription managing director with features like these:

• Offers both automated and manual renewals
• Offers a billing schedule to fit your subscription model (weekly, monthly, yearly)
• Automated emails reminding customers when their payment will process
• Customers can upgrade or downgrade their subscriptions

Your monthly revenue is more accurate and anticipated when y'all automate renewals and streamline your subscription direction. For this reason, we highly recommend defaulting to automated renewals.

Subscription Box Pros and Cons

The market place for subscription box services has grown by more than 100 percent every year for the past five years. And so, it's a proven profitable eCommerce model. But it's not an online model without challenges. Here are few to keep in mind.

Revenue

As with any subscription service, acquirement is fairly anticipated. Customers sign up for a contracted period of fourth dimension for a specific amount. Predictable acquirement helps you confidently program other parts of your business like shipping, space rental, and hiring employees.

However, subscription box services are notorious for their high client churn. More than than a tertiary of customers abolish their subscriptions in less than three months and more than half cancel within six.

So while subscription models are anticipated, subscribers are not. Cut downward on customer churn past offering discounts to those who sign upwardly for a long-term subscription (e.g., yearly instead of monthly).

Shipping

Subscription box services similar Tinker Crate lower their shipping costs past standardizing box sizes and shipping times. Unless you're shipping dumbbells one month and silk flowers the next, yous can utilize the same type of box every time. This volition help you lot approximate shipping costs more accurately.

But standardizing your box size also means you're limited to what products yous tin offering. If your customers get a different selection of products each month, then you're express to the size and number of products that will fit in your box. You may demand to alter your box size as your business grows.

Client Feel

Profitable subscription box services similar the men's shaving supply merchant Harry'southward are convenient and cost-effective. Customers get to skip the cramped aisles at brick-and-mortar stores and relieve money. Information technology's an attractive value proposition.

Yet, when perceived value drops or convenience lags, customers are quick to drop your service. They need a superior terminate-to-terminate customer experience, which means keeping costs low while delivering quality products on time.

For curated services offering unlike products every calendar month, function of your customers' perceived value will be in how often yous surprise and delight them. That means sourcing unique products and personalizing shipments with surveys and questionnaires. The less personalized the service, the more than cancellations you'll take.

Your customers want to feel similar they're getting a gift each month that surprises them. If your box contents aren't that "fun," try including original content similar a magazine about your products (eastward.k., wine subscription pamphlet) or something fun and educational (due east.g., a "bathroom reader" for your men'southward shaving supply service). The anticipation of what's in the box delivers joy and delight—don't forget to pack that value into your boxes, too.

WooCommerce Subscription Box Examples

Here are a few subscription box companies that bring personalization, flexibility, and convenience to their subscribers.

CineCrate

Subscription Model: CineCrate is a curated subscription box for kids interested in filmmaking. A subscription costs $39 per month, and subscribers get a themed CineCrate with a costume, prop, and other movie-making materials. The CineCrate WordPress site runs on WooCommerce and WooCommerce Subscriptions.

Personalization. Like other subscription box services aimed at children, CineCrate founders Stephanie Brogan and Lizzy Montana accept to find unique and creative means to personalize their customers' experiences.

Brogan explains, "We have to make certain that the products we include are unique and inspire creativity. We take to find clever ways to fit each particular together inside the box." To build a theme for their diverse items, CineCrates uses movie genres like superhero movies.

But to push personalization further, CineCrate owners include a customized workbook for brainstorming character evolution, storyboarding, and writing their scripts. "By including the workbook and activities to pair with our box items, information technology helps our subscribers use their inventiveness to make their movie making more personalized," Brogan says.

The workbook balances the guidance a child needs with the freedom of expression to personalize the experience.

Brogan says the biggest challenge the company has faced so far is keeping costs depression while ensuring quality products. CineCrate uses standard box sizing (12x9x2 inches) to lower aircraft fees and majority-buying to lower product costs.

Driftaway Coffee

Subscription Model: Driftaway Coffee is a curated subscription box service for coffee connoisseurs. The subscription works on a "edible bean-to-cup" marketing arroyo where subscribers can leave coffee edible bean farmers feedback on the taste and quality of their coffee.

Order Flexibility. Driftaway offers an impressive level of order flexibility. Customers can choose among four subscription plans based on the weight, three different delivery preferences (weekly, 2 weeks, or monthly), and two different billing frequencies (per shipment or 6 months).

By giving customers this level of cost customization, Driftaway maximizes client retention. Customers can order as much as they want or can beget. Every bit such, customers are less likely to feel locked into their monthly order—compared to a service with the same shipping weights or number of products each month.

Making Customers Part of Something Bigger. Driftaway excels at giving customers a complete stop-to-end experience. Subscribers tin can participate in a Globe Coffee Research organization. The WCR helps inquiry and develop hardier strains of coffee beans, helping local farmers avert financial losses from diseases, pests, and drought.

Driftaway's feedback and researching funding programs place their customers inside the entire ecosystem of bean production. The company sells more than coffee to its customers. Information technology sells the thought of community—a notion that makes customers feel like they're office of something larger.

Subscribe to Your Ain Ideas

It may feel similar the subscription box marketplace is saturated, simply there's plenty of room for creative entrepreneurs who find niche markets or unique opportunities. If you've already got a website, think near how you can utilize your resources and connections to reach an untapped market place.

• Are you a musician with a website? And so start a subscription box service for your music. Offer it in downloadable MP3s or CDs every month for a small subscription. Information technology's a great way to promote your fine art and connect with current fans.
• Are you a mode influencer? Start a curated box service filled with hand-picked selections of your sponsors' products.
• Are you lot a music blogger? So start a record-of-the-month club where you send new musical experiences to your subscribers.
• Are you a hiker with a social following? Create a monthly "Hiker'south Snack Box" filled with nutritional goodies for high-energy sports.
• Are you a YouTube makeup artist? Then work with brands you dear to assemble sample palates for a monthly subscription box.
• Are you a podcaster? Create a "box" with access to exclusive content and fun swag related to your podcast, like shirts, stickers, patches, and sponsor products.
• Are you a mom blogger? Put together a kit with crafts for keeping kids decorated, recipe cards that feature your sponsors, and samples of your favorite products.

When information technology comes to subscription box services, there are even so plenty of artistic means to start a concern. The existent claiming is maintaining value for your customers. If you can personalize their experience while keeping selections surprising and fresh, y'all'll be more than halfway to building a profitable subscription box service.

Managed WooCommerce Hosting Can Become You lot Started

Whether you lot program to make and ship your own subscription box products, or yous programme to sell existing products, we take a Starter Program just for you. All of our plans include Beaver Builder for landing pages and Jilt for recovering abased carts.

Source: https://www.nexcess.net/woocommerce-resource/how-start-subscription-box-service-woocommerce/

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