💡TIP: Before reading this module, review our Academy module on Enrollment Rate to learn more about subscription enrollment rate and how to start supercharging your subscriber acquisition.

Bonafide's subscription offer displays price per unit to highlight subscription savings, which we've seen boost enrollment for brands by an average of 199%.

Key Takeaways

• Offer styling can drive an over 100% increase in enrollment rate.
• Show customers the financial benefits and value that subscriptions offer with transparent pricing and visible discounts. Color differentiating and bolding subscription offer copy can increase enrollment by up to 49%.
• Prevent confusion by emphasizing subscription management options.
• Defaulting your offer to subscription can drive an up to 5x increase in enrollment rate.
• Fewer clicks, a tailored default frequency, and a simplified path to checkout can not only increase enrollment, but also decrease long-term cancellations.

What You See Matters

It’s no secret that your customers need to like what they see to make the final decision to click “add to cart.” But just how much weight do people put on the visual experience to make that call?

Styling your subscription enrollment offer is an often overlooked yet powerful optimization that boosts general site conversion and subscription enrollment rates. HubSpot confirms that 90% of information transferred to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text.

Something as simple as the color of an advertisement’s links is proven to induce a drastic, multi-million dollar increase in larger companies’ conversions such as Google and Heinz. You can ensure your customers are aware of the value of subscriptions by optimizing your subscription enrollment visuals; making intentional decisions about the discounting display, color, ordering on your PDP, and other important stylistic elements.

Here's how to style your Product Detail Page (PDP) offer to catch the eye and entice new subscribers.

• Show your customers the value of subscribing
• Simplify your customer experience
• Acknowledge and prevent subscription anxiety

Show your customers the value of subscribing

Money talks: display your discount and savings

In addition to a clearly highlighted % off if offering discounting; strikethrough or transparent pricing is an integral component of value realization, allowing customers not only see their subscription discount, but actually understand its financial value on their purchase. 

It's not rocket science - show your customers the amazing value you're offering them!

Tula leverages a bolded offer copy and a clear incentive display to show customers the value they’ll receive through subscriptions. They color differentiate the offer, loyalty benefits, and bold all subscription benefits.

Clarins clearly highlights potential savings for subscriptions and calls out all relevant benefits of their replenishment offer; including discounting, shipping, samples, and loyalty rewards.

Highlight your subscription offer visually

We know it sounds too simple to be true - but bolding your enrollment copy (the actual words that display your subscription offer) and placing your subscription offer above your one-time offer can actually impact your enrollment rate. 

In this enrollment offer example, all subscription offers (this product offers prepaid options) are bolded, nested above the one-time offer, highlighted within a box, and uses suggestive iconography like "best value" to emphasize subscribing via pay as you go or prepaid subscriptions.

In an A/B Test of 13 Ordergroove merchants, we found that placing the subscription offer over the one-time resulted in an average 11% lift in enrollment rate, with some merchants experiencing up to a 63% lift.

Another best practice to highlight subscription as the best option is to style the enrollment copy within a box, which catches the eye and differentiates the subscription offer’s value from one-time. 

Color is another underrated area of opportunity when styling your enrollment copy. 85% of shoppers point to color as a primary reason for purchasing a particular product, HubSpot reports. This is actually backed by science - The Isolation Effect explains that a key stimuli or offer (in this case, the enrollment offer), contrasted against a monotone or homogeneous background is more likely to leave a significant impact on the viewer. 

That was a lot of really fancy words all to say that the color of your copy matters, and can make a real impact on your subscription enrollment performance.

To test this with real-world applications, we ran an A/B test of 6 Ordergroove merchants who adjusted their enrollment copy color to be in contrast with the rest of the text on their PDP offer. The results? An average lift of 17%; with up to a 49% increase in enrollment rate when the subscription offer is color differentiated from the rest of the PDP text. 

When considering these adjustments for your enrollment offer copy, it’s important to think about what colors are cohesive to your brand and the rest of your website. We’ve seen the best results with merchants changing their subscription enrollment copy to a different but still visually appealing and impactful color than the rest of their PDP text.

Default your offer to subscription

Access our full module on defaulting to subscription to drive higher subscription enrollment here. To avoid sounding like a broken record, we won't go too much into detail here on that. Spoiler Alert: Defaulting to subscription can drive up to a 5x recorded increase in enrollment rate if applied properly!

Simplify your customer experience

Minimize clicks with a radio button offer

While your subscription offer can be displayed via a radio button or a checkbox option, we recommend the radio button experience for a few reasons. As always, we've done our research here!

User Experience testing has proven that radio buttons minimize cognitive load, making the purchasing experience simpler and less stressful for the customer. They do this by laying out all options visually in front of the user, letting them compare and contrast their choices. This is especially beneficial if you’re highlighting subscription incentives clearly, like we recommended above. Radio buttons are also more accessibility-friendly, as they’re easier to operate for users who may have difficulty making precise mouse movements.

For an enrollment experience, more is usually not merrier. As a general rule of thumb, we recommend simplifying the enrollment process down to as few clicks as possible. Customers may get overwhelmed with the additional requirement of a checkbox offer. Yes, one extra click seems simple - but can be the difference between an order realized and one lost - so it’s best to keep options simple with a radio button when possible. 

Tula uses radio buttons to simplify their user experience and allow customers to weigh all options and benefits before proceeding to checkout.

Leading customers away from your PDP lowers conversion

Another best practice to keep in mind regarding clickability - the handy infographic pop-up next to your subscription offer is a great opportunity to educate your customers on subscription benefits, but shouldn't add additional complexity to your PDP. Some businesses choose to link to their subscription landing page or FAQs via this pop-up. While this encourages customers to learn more about subscriptions, this puts another obstacle in the way of conversion and can drive traffic away from your offer pages.

We recommend giving customers a concise TLDR (Too Long, Didn't Read) summary of your subscription perks in that pop-up or drop-down, but making your subscription landing page and/or FAQs accessible and highly visible via your navigation bar instead.

Peet's Coffee has a uniquely standout enrollment offer. Highlighting the subscription option with color differentiation, bolded copy, and large text ensure customers are unlikely to accidentally sign up for a subscription and rather opt in intentionally for the benefit of free shipping.

Acknowledge and prevent subscription anxiety

Subscription anxiety, like the fear of overstock of product, can be a stubborn enrollment deterrent. Even for things you use daily, like coffee, it can be easy to spiral into hypotheticals of those occasional days where you’ll treat yourself, or busy mornings when a drive-through just sounds easier. And some other subscription services make management pesky or inaccessible; leading to fears of never-ending orders or customer support lines.

It's important to acknowledge that these fears will play a part in your customer's decision-making. Preventing these from the get-go is the most compelling way to address and reassure your customers. So let's break that down!

Choose the right default frequency

Displaying the right default frequency helps customers allay their fears of ending up with 3 bags of ground coffee and a 4th on the way next week. If you have data on your customer base's rate of consumption, use this to tailor the most convenient experience for them. By matching proportions and product sizes with their corresponding frequencies on the PDP, customers can simplify meeting their product needs without the need for extra worrying or math.

A 2lb bag of coffee, for instance, should be set to a recommended default frequency of between 1 to 2 months, depending on how many cups a day your customers consume; whereas a unit like a 10 pack of k cups should be on a weekly or bi-weekly cadence. You should provide your customers with a minimum of 2-3 delivery frequency options, as needs may vary depending on a variety of factors such as household size or consumption rate. 

Remind Customers of Their Options

Another way to allay customer concerns of overstock or subscription manageability is to highlight their management options. Beneath your subscription offer copy, we recommend using language like "skip, pause, or cancel anytime" so customers feel empowered to manage their subscriptions easily.

Dollar Shave Club makes it clear that their subscribers can modify their subscriptions on their own terms.

Spatial considerations

So now that you’re an enrollment offer aficionado, you may be asking yourself how to put this all together. How should this all look, visually? And where should your subscription offer sit on your PDP?

Our recommendation: when in doubt, keep it simple. Sources like Deloitte agree - a streamlined shopping experience is the best way to maximize your conversion rates.  Keep your enrollment offer minimalistic but still informative; taking into account our stylistic recommendations, ensure your subscription enrollment offer is directly above your one-time, and that both of those are above your “add to cart” button. 

📝 Try it now!

Ordergroove lets you configure and style your enrollment offer easily. Work with your Ordergroove CSM to style your enrollment offer and maximize subscription enrollment for your business today.

To unlock another boost to your enrollment rate, review the rest of the modules in this course here, and our module on how to avoid accidental subscription sign-ups here.

Suggested Modules

• Boost Subscription Enrollment with Default to Subscription
• Preventing and Learning from Accidental Subscription Sign-ups
• Boost Enrollment by up to 300% with Cart Opt-in