4 Signs It’s Time To Upgrade Your eCommerce Subscription Solution
Straddling between being proactive and reactive in your eCommerce subscription business is a fine line. You want to anticipate your future needs when it comes to a subscription solution without investing in something more powerful than you currently need.
We get it.
If you’ve been wondering whether or not it’s time to upgrade your eCommerce subscription platform, we wanted to make your decision to switch or not easier, so we summed up four signs distilled from customer conversations and market insights to help you out.
1. You have $50K+ in monthly subscription revenue or subs generate more than one-third of your revenue.
If you’re curious about whether or not your customers would buy on a recurring basis and view subscriptions as a switch you can flip on or off, then you’re not ready to upgrade. But if you view subscriptions as a core revenue driver for your brand and the proof is in the pudding (i.e. you have $50K+ per month in subscription revenue or ⅓ of your total online revenue comes from subscriptions) then it’s probably time to switch.
As a fast-growing brand that’s invested time and money acquiring subscribers, you see the growth potential in optimizing your post-purchase experience to increase customer LTV. If you meet the revenue marks above but aren’t optimizing for engagement and retention, you’re leaving money on the table and need a solution built to grow subscriptions (not one for managing recurring orders).
2. You need better features and functionality for your scaling business.
It’s time to switch if your current solution isn’t delivering the features and functionality that matter for your fast-growing brand. For example, native features like checkout upsell (in-checkout, post-checkout upsell and post-checkout downsell and functionality to build cohorts based on specific criteria (e.g. number of orders received) and take action (e.g. provide discounts, gifts, etc.) are proven to increase LTV.
Do you want to go through another holiday period where you’re not optimizing for repeat purchases and retention to support your growth goals? At Upscribe, we believe retention is the way brands win in today’s market and our product ethos is centered on this belief with a clear vision and path forward. Check out our 2020 product roadmap to learn more.
3. Your team is spending too much time on breakdowns and bugs.
Uptime issues from legacy tech infrastructure affect customers’ ability to make purchases. Repeat issues like these not only burden your team with an influx of emails and support tickets, they impact your bottom line. That’s why Upscribe focuses so heavily on fast and reliable technology (and are proud of our 99.9% uptime). We’re built for fast-growing brands that need to deliver a seamless purchasing experience to their customers every time.
From an operational standpoint, having your team spend chunks of time dealing with repeat bugs isn’t a good use of resources. Your team should be supporting customers with one-off exceptions or issues, not constantly working through the same problems for customers over and over again. As a fast-growing brand, your team should be proactive about ways to engage and delight your customers, not bogged down thanks to legacy tech infrastructure and support.
4. Data security has been on your mind more than it used to.
Protecting your customers’ data is important, regardless of how big your business is. But, the more subscribers and customers you acquire, the more data you accumulate and are responsible for protecting. Any potential breach becomes that much more catastrophic, with more customers impacted and put at risk.
Data security is a major risk for merchants–just look at what happened with rogue employees at Shopify stealing data from merchants. The bigger your business, the more you have to lose with a data breach. Not only would it harm your customers, but also your brand reputation, potentially impacting your retention too.
If you have a fast-growing brand and are starting to consider these risks more seriously, proactively investing in a solution where development resources are devoted to data security (like Upscribe) will pay dividends now and in the future.
