Subscription Sales Success: Tools We Recommend

In Part One of our Subscription Sales blog series we covered why you should consider adding this offering to your eCommerce platform. Here in Part Two, we’ll talk more about how you can make such an offering a reality for your customers.

(Here’s the 10-second recap from Part One: Subscription Sales are booming in popularity for eCommerce competitors because they can create a recurring revenue stream that makes customers happy and, once operational, require little additional management oversight. And here is the full first article if you’d like to catch up.)

Let’s take a look at solutions offered by two of the most popular eCommerce platforms, Magento and Big Commerce, in supporting a Subscription Sales option for you.

Magento Extensions and Plug-In Options

eCommerce merchants whose sites are built on the Magento platform will find a couple of popular options that bring Subscription Sales into reach:  the Advanced Subscription Products extension from Aheadworks and the Subscriptions and Recurring Payments tool offered by Magenest.

Aheadworks is a well-established provider of Magento-compatible products. For those seeking to add Subscription Sales options to their platform, they offer a well-conceived and well-executed option. Wide flexibility is offered for creating and altering Subscription Sales options from both the customer’s side of the transaction and from the seller’s side. Interfaces are clean and easy to navigate.

Here’s a view of the overview screen for managing subscriptions.

A look at a page that allows customers to monitor subscriptions they have chosen.

Skin-care site Lancer offers a good example of what Subscription Sales offerings can look like from the customer’s point of view.

Another plug-in option for managing Subscription Sales in Magento is Magenest’s Subscriptions & Recurring Payments tool. It offers similar functionality to the Aheadworks extension. It also includes a straightforward tool for allowing customers to set up subscription orders for customers who buy a product at regular intervals, which has become a particularly popular offering within the B2B sector. Plan flexibility appears to be a real strength with this plug-in.

BigCommerce Plug-In Options

Tools are available to support and fuel  eCommerce Subscription Sales in SAAS platforms like BigCommerce as well. The Aneto Subscriptions Manager plug-in for BigCommerce offers much of the same functionality as we’ve already seen from the Magento offerings.

Here’s a look at the overview screen for this plug-in.

The Aneto Subscriptions Manager plug-in brings key functionality that drives BigCommerce platform Subscription Sales success. eCommerce merchants are able to create multiple subscription packages and have the flexibility to divide product offerings up into grouped categories. Value offerings popular with customers such as the ability to include free products and discount coupons in your packages are other capabilities included with this plug-in.

Conclusion

Subscription Sales Models show few signs of slowing down as a growing sector in the eCommerce landscape. Data from the Subscribed Institute showed that in 2020, the subscription sales sector grew 11.6%, including accelerating to a 21% growth rate in the fourth quarter of the year. If you haven’t done so already, you should consider how your eCommerce business could add Subscription Sales to your offerings. Please contact us for assistance in getting your subscription functionality set up and running.