Over the past two years, we have become increasingly aware that payment gateways have been designed to serve traditional e-commerce (one-time transactions) as their primary use case. In many instances, the features and capabilities needed to process payments on a recurring basis are sorely lacking. We have viewed this as both a challenge and an [...]
Internet marketing for most companies centers around the economics of customer acquisition. For most companies, it is thought of as a ‘one-time event’ leading to a conversion or sale. Subscription-based companies have the added benefit of receiving revenue over a longer period of time. In the financial world, a predictable and repeated income stream is [...]
Most companies offering subscriptions on the web serve a global list of geographies. It is also very short-sighted to assume that potential customers will be willing to subscribe to your offering if it is only offered in your local currency. Can you imagine if Spotify rolled out in the U.S. by only offering its service [...]
Q: Who in your company is responsible for customer churn? If you had to pause and ponder the answer, or if you felt that it was everybody’s responsibility…then you’re not alone. When I was with eBay, it was far easier for marketing teams to focus on acquiring new customers than to identify an effective means [...]
Subscription billing models come in a variety of different flavors and apply to many different categories of businesses. However, there are a few common factors that must be considered when selecting the best vendor to handle billing on behalf of your business. Step One: Define your own billing requirements – what are your needs? Here [...]
There are many reasons why a credit card will fail. Handling more error types means better customer facing error messaging and improved card handling. Imagine the difference between telling a customer “your credit card was declined, check the number and try again” versus “your credit card is perfectly valid, but has a restriction that prevents it from being used with us. Please try a different card.” Clear error message eliminate the customer confusion and follow up support.
Subscription business models are attractive for many different kinds of businesses. However, recurring billing can be tricky, error prone, and consuming from a customer support and engineering standpoint – which is why we recommend outsourcing your recurring billing and subscription management to Recurly. Step One: Create your subscription plans Once you sign up, you will [...]
The short answer is: Flexibility and Total Cost Of Ownership We’re glad you asked – because this could save you many hours of development, and many curse words before learning the hard way – on your own precious company’s dime. Every payment gateway is designed to handle one-time transactions. Some gateways like PayPal and Authorize.Net [...]