Setting Up the Subscription App

Subscriptions are widely used in various e-commerce niches, including beauty, healthcare, magazines, and pet supplies. They enable customers to make regular purchases by subscribing to a plan offered by the business. This simplifies the buying process for customers, eliminating the need for frequent orders and payments.

Businesses also benefit significantly from subscription-based sales. They foster increased customer loyalty, leading to recurring and stable revenue streams. Additionally, businesses can better manage inventory and shipping by anticipating the predictable order patterns of subscribers.

The SHOPLINE Subscription app empowers businesses to easily sell products and services through subscription plans, establishing a reliable source of recurring revenue. With this app, stores can quickly set up subscription-based sales and efficiently process the necessary product settlements in just three simple steps within five minutes.

Setting Up Subscription Plan Groups

Before you begin to complete any of the set-up steps in the SHOPLINE admin, you will need to download the Subscription app from the SHOPLINE App Store and install it in your SHOPLINE admin.

After you have successfully downloaded the Subscription App, there are some steps to complete in setting up the Subscription section. 

In this example, you are a business selling flowers and is ready to offer a recurring subscription for flowers, with a weekly frequency. 

To create a subscription product plan group: 

1. From your SHOPLINE admin, go to Apps > Subscription App.
   
2. On the subscription page, open and click on the Subscription plan group.
   
   
3. Click on Add configuration.
   
   • Renaming your plan: Name of your subscription plan
   • Adding products: The subscription plan can include a single item or multiple items. If you're unable to choose a product, you'll need to first add products to your SHOPLINE admin.
     
     
   • Setting subscription rules:
     
     • Subscription period: Set the subscription cycle times, i.e. the number of shipments in a subscription cycle.
     • Discount Settings: Click on [Open discount], and set the discount compared with one-time purchases, to attract customers to subscription purchases.
     • Subscription plan options: Set different subscription cycle frequencies, including 15 days, 4 weeks, 3 months, 1 year, etc. Set the appropriate purchase frequency according to the type of store products to meet the different requirements of customers for consumption cycles.
       
       Here is an example of when you fill in the subscription plan:
       
     • Setting up component styling and email settings:
       
       • Component styling: There are 3 subscription component styles for different theme styles and selling methods. Style 1 is suitable for many purchase options and Style 2 or Style 3 is suitable for a few purchase options.
       • E-mail settings: You can send automated emails to customers to ensure that they know the order information and increase customer loyalty. It is also possible to set up automated emails for feedback to merchants to facilitate real-time follow-up with customers.

Now, you have completed setting up the subscription payments settings. In this example, the customer is offered to subscribe to a product with variations, you can set individual prices for each variation. It's set that the customer will pay $88 for a small bouquet, $128 for a medium bouquet and $138 for a large bouquet for a one-time purchase.

Once the subscription plan group is created, customers will have the option to choose either a one-time purchase or subscribe to receive recurring deliveries as per their preference with savings. 

Viewing and Managing Order Data

After the customer has placed an order, let's look at how to view and manage the subsequent order data.

1. Overall data module on the Home page: You can view the data of  [Number Of Order], [GMV], [Number of subscription contracts], and [Subscriber], which is based on the data generated by the subscription model, to give you an overview of you business performance.
   

2. Setting up subscription plan group: 
   If you want to view a particular contract, click on the [Subscription contract], and you can directly view the [Product details], [Customer Information], [Subscription plan],  [Order history] and other basic information. If the customer's next order has been adjusted, you can directly change the order creation date in [Next Order], create an order immediately or skip this order cycle.
   For other orders that are associated with this subscription contract, the contract details page will display a list of associated orders. You can click [Order Number] to jump to the admin page and view the order details.
   

3. Check and manage the customers
   Go to [Client] > you can view the name, shipping address and payment method on the left side. On the right side, all the subscription contracts of this customer, including [Status], [Next order time], etc. are displayed in this area, which is convenient for merchants to view and manage the contract status of a certain customer in a unified manner.
   

4. Test before using this app
   After setting and creating the subscription payments, you can place a real test order in the store to generate a subscription contract and subscription order after payment. 

   Note: If you're having trouble placing a real test order, please refer to the article.

   
   You can manage the subscription contract and subscription order in the Subscription contract.
   You can click on Create an order now in the subscription contract, where you will find that the order will be created automatically without the customer confirming payment.
   
   After completing the test, the subscription order can be refunded like a normal order, and the subscription contract can be cancelled to avoid subsequent automatic order creation and deduction.
   

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why can't I place a purchase order at the store after setting up a subscription?

In order to use the subscription payments app, your store must have any of the three payment channels available that support subscription payments: SHOPLINE Payment, PayPal and Stripe.

Additionally, the subscription payment embed must be activated in the theme editor.

2. Can subscriptions be stacked with other store discounts, etc.?

Subscriptions can be stacked with store discount codes in the first subscription order, but cannot be compatible with automatic discounts, limited-time promotions, member prices, pre-sale prices, distribution prices, etc. on the shopping cart page. Subsequent orders generated by the automatic fulfillment of the subscription contract will not be discounted.

3. Is it compatible with other apps?

Currently, subscription payment is compatible with POD - Product Customization, Add-to-cart plugin for contact lenses, and B2B & Wholesale Solutions. If you have other apps that need to be compatible, please contact CS or Sales to put forward the corresponding requirements.

4. What happens to the subscription contract if the store is frozen or closed?

If a store is frozen or closed, the subscription contract will be cancelled and orders will not be generated. The contract status will not be restored after the store status becomes normal, which requires you to pay attention to the subscription contract that has not been completed.

5. Why is the price of the subscription products different between the product details page and the settlement page?

The product detailed page is only based on the current sales price for the calculation of the subscription discount, while the settlement page price will be based on the current purchase of all the goods and stacks with other discounts, which also includes shipping, taxes and other costs of calculation.

6. Why is the actual amount of the subscription order different from the subscription amount shown in the subscription contract?

The actual order will be calculated according to the address and shipping rules, taxes and other real-time order amounts.

7. When the product is taken off the shelf or out of stock and in other states, it will cause the subscription contract to fail to create an order automatically.

After failing to create the order, there will be an email to remind you and your customer to modify the inventory or status of the goods according to the results of the error. Then it will automatically retry the order (a total of 5 times of automatic order creation; each order is created after 5 hours; the order creation started from 0:00).