Maximize your subscription growth with these 4 website improvements

Sanjot Harsoor Author

Sanjot is a Senior Product Marketing Manager on the Product Marketing team at... Full bio

Updated: August 29, 20224 minute read

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Today, many businesses mix both subscription and one-time purchase options in their store—a powerful strategy that can increase customer lifetime value (LTV) by up to 230%. To see even more benefits, including increased revenue, decreased business expenses, and more seamless revenue prediction, merchants should focus on increasing their ratio of subscribers to one-time purchasers.

So—how can merchants accomplish this? To start, implement four simple, yet essential website best practices:

  1. Centralize critical information for your subscription program
  2. Highlight your subscription offering on your store’s home page
  3. Reduce friction from the product page
  4. One-click upsell one-time-purchases (OTPs) to a subscription while in cart

Now, let’s dive into each of these strategies to maximize your subscriber growth.

1. Centralize critical information for your subscription program

Understandably, customers can be hesitant to subscribe before they know exactly what they’re committing to. The most effective brands answer common subscription questions clearly on their website to build trust and confidence through transparency.

On their website, Super Coffee’s dedicated landing page includes key benefits of their subscriptions.

To accomplish this, create a dedicated subscription landing page, which you can link to in emails and other marketing campaigns. This page should consolidate information on topics like:

  • Subscriber perks, such as discounts, free shipping, and loyalty incentives
  • Popular subscription products and customer reviews for them
  • Subscription cancellation and auto-renewal policies
  • Logistics information, such as shipping timelines and customer support expectations
  • Details on how customers can manage their own subscriptions, such as via the customer portal or transactional SMS 
  • FAQs about your subscription program

Discover how to launch your own subscription landing page.

2. Highlight your subscription offering on your store’s homepage

Make it easy for customers to discover your subscription program by ensuring it is front and center from the moment customers arrive at your store. By featuring a few key perks of your subscriptions on the homepage, you can increase clickthrough rates to your subscriptions. For example, you might call out the convenience of a fully stocked pantry or the cumulative savings of a subscriber discount.

On their homepage, Hubble Contacts details how their subscriptions work in three easy steps, along with an intuitive CTA to start for $1.

You can draw attention to your subscription program without overhauling the entire homepage. Start simple with a banner or call-to-action button. Consider linking the button or banner directly to a subscription landing page or collection of your subscription products.

Learn more about how to optimize your homepage for subscriptions.

3. Reduce friction from the product page

On their product detail pages, Drift provides intuitive buttons to subscribe, along with key context about the benefits of subscribing.

Customers decide whether or not to subscribe from your product detail page (PDP), so make sure to plan this page carefully. There are three main strategies top subscription companies explore to build an effective PDP:

  1. If offering both a subscription and one-time purchase option, set the subscription option as the default. Recharge merchants can accomplish this easily through their widget settings.
  2. Create a custom modal to reinforce the value of subscriptions. Your modal could highlight subscription perks (e.g. free or priority shipping), flexible cancellation policies, or other unique benefits of your offerings.
  3. Link back to your subscription landing page. Free up plenty of real estate to maximize the value of your PDP by prominently linking to the landing page.

Learn how to highlight subscriptions on your product pages.

4. One-click upsell one-time-purchases (OTPs) to a subscription while in cart

Every touchpoint on your website can be a subscription upsell opportunity, including the shopping cart. A subscriber discount becomes even more persuasive at the moment your customer reviews their cart total and considers their budget.

A cart upsell modal reminds one-time customers of exactly what they’re missing before they finalize their decision. You can build your own or leverage a paid integration like Rebuy to launch the modal for you.

Within a customer’s shopping cart, Bully Bunches offers the option to upgrade a one-time purchase to a subscription and save 5%.

Walk through how to create a cart upsell modal.

Ready to get started?

By implementing these best practices, you can not only boost your subscription sales, but also create better customer experiences that increase LTV and brand loyalty. For step-by-step directions on each of these strategies, read our four guides:

Looking for even more industry expertise? Consider collaborating with an agency partner for additional support.