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Businesses Utilizing Subscription Billing Need a Strong Website

© 2015 Vindicia, Inc. All rights reserved. Vindicia Confidential.

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Businesses Utilizing Subscription Billing Need a Strong Website

© 2015 Vindicia, Inc. All rights reserved. Vindicia Confidential.

When you run a business that uses a subscription billing model, you need a website that

is easy to use, expertly designed and memorable. Customers that have a poor

experience online will simply go elsewhere. Your website is a reflection of the rest of your

business subscription offerings. A strong website experience for customers will help drive

sales and keep customer retention high.

Create a strong homepage

A homepage that is easy to navigate, loads fast and directs customers toward your

subscription offerings will have an important impact on your bottom line. Everything on

your website has to work smoothly and quickly to ensure the acquisition of new

subscriptions. According to Kissmetrics, as website load times increased, so did page

abandonment. Around 30 percent of website visitors utilizing mobile devices said they

wouldn't wait more than 6 to 10 seconds for a Web page to load.

3 © 2015 Vindicia, Inc. All rights reserved. Vindicia Confidential.

Video can be a highly effective way of showing the positive aspects of your subscription

offerings.

4 © 2015 Vindicia, Inc. All rights reserved. Vindicia Confidential.

Utilize video and images on pitch pages

Pitch pages should have somewhere between two and four subscription offerings on

them. This will show potential customers several different subscription offerings to

choose from. While there is often no substitute for text content on these pages, don't

forget the power an image or video can lend to a subscription package. According to

Smashing Magazine, while video isn't always the best option, it has the ability to deliver

a direct and clear message to a wide group of people. Video can provide a different,

more intimate user experience if done in the right way.

Video can show the subscription package's features in depth, or it can be used to show

how satisfied customers utilize your offerings. Smashing Magazine reported videos work

especially well in the entertainment industry and corporate settings, such as software

subscriptions.

Ensure billing pages are concise, clutter-free and offer several payment options

If your pitch pages do what they're supposed to, potential customers will move to the

pages of your website that deal with billing. It's highly important that these pages focus

on one thing – getting the customer to sign up for a subscription. According to

Webstrategies Inc., rates for people who abandon their purchase during the checkout

process hover around 59 percent.

5 © 2015 Vindicia, Inc. All rights reserved. Vindicia Confidential.

While there are a number of reasons a consumer may decide to abandon their purchase,

15 percent reported the checkout process was too complicated. One way to reduce the

number of subscribers who leave once they reach the billing pages is to simplify the

process. These pages should only ask for information that is necessary to complete the

purchase. Don't waste the customer's time by asking things like credit card type, which

can be identified by the card number itself.

Another reason people abandon their purchase in the middle of the process is because

they can't pay the way they want. Twenty-four percent of people who abandon their

purchase wanted more payment options, Webstrategies Inc. reported. Today, cards

aren't the only way to make a subscription billing payment. The more options your

customers have to pay their bills, the more likely you are to acquire new customers and

retain current ones.

"Businesses need

to have a website

that can be easily

viewed and

navigated on

mobile devices."

Optimize the site for mobile

Mobile Web browsing is on the rise. According to the Pew

Research Center, nearly two-thirds of Americans own

smartphones, and for many of those people, their phone is the

main link to the Internet. For this reason, it is extremely

important for businesses of all kinds to have a website that can

be easily viewed and navigated on mobile devices.

6 © 2015 Vindicia, Inc. All rights reserved. Vindicia Confidential.

Kissmetrics reported 79 percent of shoppers using a mobile device are less likely to use

the same website again if they have a bad experience, and 44 percent of mobile device

users will tell friends about a poor experience. This means every aspect of your site

needs to be ready for mobile use.

7 © 2015 Vindicia, Inc. All rights reserved. Vindicia Confidential.

About the Author: Bryta Schulz

Bryta joined Vindicia in 2013 and serves as Senior Vice

President of Marketing. She is responsible for building brand

awareness, creating go-to-market strategy and promotion, and

driving growth. With over a decade of executive level marketing,

product management and PR experience, Bryta has led

marketing teams in enterprise technology and SaaS companies.

Her experience includes heading product marketing at GoGrid,

PGP, RSA and Symantec and business development and

product management positions at Xcert, Thales, and

Persistence Software. Bryta holds a MA in Translation from the

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and an MBA from the

University of Reutlingen.

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© 2015 Vindicia, Inc. All rights reserved. Vindicia Confidential.