Subscription ecommerce is in demand and there are plenty of success stories. For example, Birchbox sends subscribers a selection of cosmetics and skincare products monthly and Manscaped sells grooming replenishments via subscription. Ecommerce subscriptions help build long-term customer relationships, turning one-time customers into repeat buyers who become reliable sources of recurring revenue.
Shopify recently announced a big change to the checkout, introducing its first APIs and tooling that will enable partners and developers to build new subscription ecommerce experiences directly within Shopify Checkout. Previously retailers have had to use third party checkouts to handle subscription products, unable to handle baskets for this type of product natively. It’s a big change and something merchants have wanted to see for quite some time.
Trends for subscription ecommerce
The latest projections suggest that by 2025 the global ecommerce subscription market will be worth $246.6 billion. In the US, The Subscription Economy Index (SEI) shows that subscription businesses grew revenues up to 5x faster than standard retail sales (18.2% versus 3.7%) from 2012 to 2019. The revenue potential can’t be ignored by ecommerce teams. With more than 10,000 stores using its subscription services, we invited Recharge onto the podcast to clarify what this big Shopify announcements really means for retailers.
In our 51st episode, we’re joined by Recharge‘s Head of Partnerships and Growth, Rob Barr. Rob talks to us about the impact of Shopify’s recent API changes, allowing for subscriptions within the native checkout, the ever-changing requirements for subscriptions and Recharge’s upcoming integrations with other platforms.
You can also listen to this ecommerce site search episode via the following:
Key discussion points
- Walk through of the Shopify subscription APIs
- How will changes to the native Shopify checkout impact merchants?
- What do the changes mean to Recharge in terms of merchant onboarding?
- What’s the benefit of being able to use Shopify Payments for subscriptions?
- What’s the process for migrating tokens over from existing stored payment methods?
- Recharge’s planned integrations with BigCommerce and Magento
- Update in Recharge’s new theme engine and API features