Seven settings, about ten minutes. Three live in Plans and four in your subscription widget. Run through them before a busy season such as Black Friday or the December holidays, when the most shoppers meet your checkout.
Some of what decides whether a shopper subscribes is a setting in your Subi admin rather than demand. These seven checks cover what a shopper is offered and how easily they can say yes, and most of them take under a minute.
Two of the checks depend on your Subi plan. Where that is the case, the article says what a locked control looks like so you are not left guessing.
# | The check | Where in Subi | Plan |
1 | Every repeat-purchase product is on a plan | Plans, the Applies to card | All plans |
2 | Shoppers get more than one delivery interval | Plans, Add selling plan | All plans |
3 | A prepaid plan exists beside the pay-as-you-go one | Plans, the Prepaid option | Plan-dependent |
4 | Shoppers can subscribe from a collection page | Subscription widgets, Display settings | Plan-dependent |
5 | The subscription option is listed first | Customize widgets, Display order | All plans, v5 widget |
6 | Preselection is a deliberate choice | Customize widgets, Default option | All plans, v5 widget |
7 | Your storefront runs the v5 widget engine | Customize widgets, Appearance | All plans |
In Plans
Open Plans from the Subi menu in your Shopify admin and open the plan you already sell. The first three checks are all inside it.
The plan form. Check 1 is the Applies to card at the bottom, check 2 is the Add selling plan row above it.
1. Is every repeat-purchase product on a plan?
The Applies to card is where a plan says what it covers. Search for a product there, or click Browse to open the Select products picker. Anything a customer buys again is a candidate: refills, consumables, staples, anything with a natural reorder date. A product that is not on a plan can never be subscribed to, however much a shopper wants it.
2. Do shoppers get more than one delivery interval?
Each delivery interval on a plan is its own selling plan, and Add selling plan opens the Add selling plan frequency form to build another. A shopper who burns through a product in three weeks and a shopper who takes three months are both buying the same thing, and a single fixed interval asks one of them to accept a schedule that does not fit.
3. Have you built a prepaid plan?
A prepaid plan is a subscription where the customer pays for several orders up front instead of being charged before each one. In the Add selling plan frequency form, switch on the Prepaid option to build one. Add it as a second plan beside the one you sell now, so nothing changes for your current subscribers and they keep the terms they signed up on.
The form behind Edit and Add selling plan. Check 2 is the frequency and interval at the top, check 3 is the Prepaid switch under Options.
If the Prepaid option carries a lock and its fields are greyed out, prepaid is not included in your Subi plan.
In your subscription widget
Check 4 is on the Subscription widgets page. For checks 5 to 7, click Customize widgets on a widget there. The panel opens on its design view, the first icon in the rail on the left.
4. Can shoppers subscribe from a collection page?
On the Subscription widgets page, under Display settings, the setting Display subscription widget on collection & quick view decides whether a shopper browsing a collection sees your subscription option, or only meets it once they open the product page. With it off, a shopper who buys straight from a collection page or a quick view never learns that a subscription was available.
Display settings, at the bottom of the Subscription widgets page. The second switch is check 4; here it is still off.
If a lock sits beside it, or clicking it opens an upgrade prompt, it is not included in your Subi plan.
5. Which purchase option does your product page list first?
Under Purchase option default, Display order decides which option shows first in the list. Vendor A/B tests suggest that listing the subscription option above the one-time one tends to lift enrollment, by roughly 11 percent on average in Ordergroove's published roundup of 13 merchants. Those tests are vendor-run, so treat it as a direction to check on your own store rather than a number to expect.
Customize widgets. Checks 5 and 6 are the two menus under Purchase option default; the preview on the right updates as you change them. Check 7 is the Appearance section above them.
6. Should the subscription option be preselected?
In the same section, Default option is the one that is pre-selected for every shopper. Some merchants have found that preselecting the subscription option increases initial opt-ins, but it can also inflate accidental sign-ups that churn at the first renewal, which costs you the goodwill as well as the subscriber.
If you try it, switch Billing reminder email on first, on the Email notifications page, so an upcoming renewal is emailed a set number of days ahead. You choose that number on the same page. A renewal already inside that window when you turn the reminder on will not get one.
Email notifications, under Settings. The last row is the billing reminder and the number of days ahead it goes out.
7. Is your storefront on the v5 widget engine?
If the Purchase option default section says it is not available for legacy widgets, your storefront is running an older engine, and checks 5 and 6 are not open to you until you move. The Appearance section of the same panel carries a notice naming your version, such as Legacy widget v3, with an Upgrade to v5 button on it. The newest storefront features run on v5, and the version is shop-wide rather than per widget.
After any of these changes, open one of your own product pages and buy nothing: just look at what a shopper meets, in the order they meet it.
Need a hand with any of it?
Start a chat with us from your Subi admin and we will go through your store with you, check by check.