The power of first impressions is something that can be the driving force behind a customer’s lifetime relationship with your brand. The average consumer will spend an average of between 2.6 and 5.7 minutes on a brand’s site for mobile and desktop shopping respectively - so it’s important to get the right offer in front of them as soon as possible. 

A good subscription landing page increases program awareness, proactively addresses questions and subscription anxiety, and is the best opportunity to communicate your program’s value to your consumers. So here’s the anatomy of a subscription landing page that’ll drive enrollment, decrease churn, and leave subscribers wanting more:

Key Takeaways

• Displaying subscription savings can 2x enrollment. Show your subscribers the financial "why" at the top of your program landing page.
• Breakdown subscription management, offers, and policies to allay anxiety and confusion; and proactively decrease churn by addressing common FAQs.
• Include CTAs to shop, linked to subscribable product landing pages.
• Embed subscriber reviews and testimonials to drive conversion.
• Optimize your information architecture (IA) for visibility, and engage customers with a strong program name/CTA.

Displaying subscription savings can 2x enrollment

Every program landing page (and every informational page, for that matter) should start off with a strong value proposition. Customers need to know “why” before anything else.

You can do this via a literal “why” checklist, like Tula:

Or via an illustrative graphic, like Clarins:

We found that displaying a subscription discount and realized savings can increase enrollment rates by an average of 199%, nearly 2x, when A/B tested. Apply this learning to your subscription landing page by highlighting the real savings customers will experience with subscriptions.

Realized savings for a tailored display

A creative way to showcase savings is through a mock customer comparative, like in Wilderness Athlete’s landing page benefits breakdown below:

Breakdown subscription management and offers to allay anxiety and confusion 

Let’s talk about subscription anxiety. Prospective subscribers may fear a lack of flexibility or management options when considering signing up for a subscription; with McKinsey attributing nearly 19% of replenishment cancellations to this fear. 

Your landing page is the best place to lay out all subscription management options and assuage this anxiety; including the ability to SKU swap (more on that here), push out or delay an order, or update their frequency of delivery.

The Honest Kitchen lets subscribers know they can edit, cancel, or pause their orders at any time - and even add items to their upcoming orders. 

PetSmart highlights subscription flexibility as one of their core Autoship value propositions; dispelling subscription anxiety around management options.

If your brand has a more complex subscription offer, you break it down clearly for subscribers in a visual diagram with a CTA to shop, like Firebelly Tea's tiered incentive breakdown including a "subscribe & save now" CTA below:

If your brand gives back in any way through any purchases; whether all purchases or specifically subscriptions, you should highlight this to your subscribers as well. Especially for brands that are B-Corporations or consider humanitarianism a core pillar of their brand strategy, it's important to remind subscribers what good their participation is furthering. Take a look at PetValu's example below:

It may seem simple, but explaining all financial and experiential offers and management options for your subscribers goes a long way in encouraging enrollment by dispelling any anxiety of the unknown or inflexibility and showcasing benefits.

Proactively decrease churn and boost enrollment by addressing common FAQs

Proactively answering frequently associated questions for your subscription program prevents cancellations by, similarly to the above tip, letting subscribers know how easy it is to manage their subscription. Let’s break down some commonly asked questions in the subscription space and how you should address them.

How do I subscribe?

You should direct customers to select your subscription offer on any eligible product, select their desired frequency, and how to create a customer account (if this is separate from your checkout process) to manage their subscription moving forward. It’s also beneficial to explain that they may add subscription items to their upcoming orders at any time using our upsell functionality (more on upselling subscriptions here).

How does my subscription work? 

You should explain your discounting and shipping structure here. Depending on your offer structure, this will look different for every brand. Firebelly Tea lays out their tiered discounting structure and their included GWP for clarity:

Can I cancel my subscription at any time?

This is one of those questions that addresses subscription anxiety; letting potential subscribers know they’re in control. Reiterate that subscribers have many flexible options including canceling, skipping, or pausing their subscription at any time.

Can I skip or pause upcoming subscription orders?

There are many use cases where putting a subscription order on hold is helpful; including but limited to a move, a financial limitation, or overstock of product. Let subscribers know they can use the “skip order” or “change date” buttons in their subscription manager at any time.

Can I change my subscription shipping frequency or quantity?

Assure subscribers that they can alter their desired frequency of delivery and quantity of products at any point in time. Repeatedly emphasizing the manageability of subscriptions may seem redundant, but it’s the best way to alleviate concerns with subscription flexibility.

Will I get order reminders?

Reassure your subscribers that you’ll notify them before every order placement, with time to edit or change their order to boot. Ordergroove lets you customize how many days before an order you’ll send an order reminder email or text, but our default setting is 4 days. Not only is it an FTC requirement to notify customers of upcoming charges before placing them, but the Order Reminder email can actually be an opportunity to upsell customers on add-ons (more on that here).

Can I stack flash or holiday sales with my subscription discount?

This is a fairly common question that may cause confusion and even prevent subscription sign-ups. For the financially savvy shopper (which is usually your ideal subscriber), getting the best deal available is important. We strongly recommend matching any ongoing sales pertinent to an active subscription product if a subscriber's order is scheduled to place at this time, and letting subscribers know about this on your program landing page. You can set this up through our best deal guarantee feature, and let your CSM know of any one-time flash sales or promotions ahead of time to make sure your subscribers receive the best onsite price and don't feel penalized for subscribing rather than canceling and buying one-time during the sale. More on sitewide sale best practices for subscriptions here.

How do I update my subscription billing or shipping information?

Direct customers to their subscription manager to change their billing or shipping information. There may also be a subset of customers wondering about subscription giftability (different shipping and billing address). We recommend implementing Prepaid subscriptions with a gifting option for these use cases and addressing them accordingly in these FAQs (more on Prepaid here). 

Can I add items to my upcoming orders?

We built our upsell feature to give subscribers the option to add items to their upcoming orders as either a recurring subscription add-on, or just a one-time add-on (more on how to boost your AOV 6x by upselling your subscriptions here). Not only is this a useful functionality to clarify, but it’s also a great selling point for subscriptions. Let customers know that they receive subscriber-exclusive discounts on recurring and one-time add-ons!

We also recommend linking customers to browse a landing page with all upsell-eligible products. You can leverage this page from multiple areas of the subscriber journey, like their subscription manager or transactional emails. And on this note, let’s talk about embedding actionable CTAs throughout a strong subscription landing page.

What if my payment method expires, or I forget about my subscription?

Customers may worry about the inevitable credit card expiration or decline. We pre-built functionalities into our platform that balance maximizing revenue collection opportunities while avoiding pesky chargebacks or fees. More on that here, but you should cover this question in your program FAQs like in the example below:

Include CTAs to shop with subscribable product landing pages and offers

Linking shoppable landing pages for subscription and upsell-eligible products throughout your landing page leverages the tried and true tactic of using CTAs to drive conversion and action. Tula links to all subscribable products at the top of their subscription landing page to encourage shoppers to browse options with all the benefits of subscribing.

Consumers like personalization and suggestibility. McKinsey reports that 35% of what consumers bought on Amazon came from its recommended products function. And Clarins leverages this proven impact of product recommendation by listing subscribable products under “auto-replenishment favorites.”

Embed subscriber reviews and testimonials to drive conversion

The data doesn’t lie: the purchase likelihood for a product with five reviews is 270% greater than the purchase likelihood of a product with no reviews. Including subscriber reviews on your program landing page can help dispel subscription anxiety and assure them of subscription benefits.

To get these reviews, we recommend incorporating post-purchase subscriber feedback requests or surveys, like Tarte’s below.

Engage Customers with a Strong Program Name or CTA

Creating a strong program name doesn’t have to be rocket science.

The main objectives of a subscription program name are to make customers aware that this is a subscription/recurring fulfillment program and to convey value (savings, benefits). Everything else is a nice-to-have; like branding the name to your business. 

It may be tempting to make this name witty or complex; and while we encourage staying true to your brand, we highly recommend using similar logic to Amazon’s trademarked Subscribe & Save nomenclature. They leverage a strong Call to Action (CTA), “subscribe,” as part of their name to entice engagement and conversion. 

Adversely, you can also refer to your program as a more static concept of “subscriptions” or “replenishment” in combination with an actionable CTA in your navigation or on your landing page.

In the below example, Firebelly Tea calls customers to “be a VIP” and to “subscribe and save.” 

Optimize your Information Architecture for visibility

Link from Site Navigation

You can build the world’s most beautiful and comprehensive landing page; but with no way to access it, it can’t do much for your business. It’s imperative that subscriptions are visible throughout the shopping experience (more on that here) but especially from your site’s homepage and navigation bar. 

In Intelligentsia’s example above, the “subscribe” CTA encourages customers to explore the benefits of subscribing and lets shoppers jump directly to the landing page from anywhere on the site.

Link from External Communications

Your program landing page should be linked to from every marketing and subscription transactional email communication. As discussed above, your landing page is an enablement resource for current subscribers with questions, and is also a strong marketing tool to leverage for prospective subscribers to convert.

📝 Try it Now!

Work with your development team or a trusted partner to create your subscription program landing page with the components we broke down above.

bareMinerals

Tula Skincare

Firebelly Tea

Intelligentsia

The Honest Kitchen

CBDistillery