Until very recently, this required merchants to choose between options that were either very expensive or had a poor customer experience . Often, it would be a combination of both.  

Last year, Shopify released Shopify Markets, which offers a multi-currency feature, enabling merchants to sell to multiple markets from one storefront. Our team at Recharge saw an opportunity to extend the same capabilities to subscriptions via thoughtful integration with Shopify Markets. 

Available to stores using our Shopify Checkout Integration (SCI), Recharge has built the most comprehensive multi-currency solution in the market. Today, we’re excited to share its release. 

“At Recharge, our goal is to create a frictionless commerce experience. When Shopify Markets became available, it was a no-brainer for us to build multi-currency support and empower our merchants to improve their international customer’s subscription experience.”

–Jenna Fishman , Product – Core Commerce

Integrated with Shopify from the ground up

From the very beginning, we understood that merchants wanted a unified experience. While simple on the surface, selling in multiple currencies can add a lot of complexities to merchant operations. A unified configuration tool can prevent unnecessary errors and losses.

By integrating with Shopify Markets, enabling multi-currency is just a few clicks away. Once a merchant enables multiple currencies in their Shopify Markets portal, Recharge will seamlessly and automatically reflect the same configuration across all key merchant/customer touchpoints. 

In other words, it just works. 

One of the significant advantages of using Recharge multi-currency with Shopify Markets is the support for currency conversion for recurring orders, which is crucial for businesses that operate on a subscription model. Shopify will automatically convert the payment amount into the customer’s local currency at checkout. For subsequent shipments of the subscription, Recharge will ensure customers pay the same price and in the same currency as checkout, regardless of changes in the exchange rate. At the same time, if an existing subscription is modified, Recharge will immediately convert the currency for the updated product(s). Finally, merchants will continue to receive their payout in the store’s default currency to accurately manage their business. 

Built into the very foundation of our platform

For Recharge, multi-currency is more than a checkmark on a feature list. As our merchants continue to grow at an accelerated pace, we see multi-currency as a core feature that should be available to all our merchants. 

Therefore, to offer true multi-currency support, we overhauled our foundation to ensure our merchants can continue to grow without concern of scalability and flexibility. This means that out of the box, multi-currency will work on: 

• Storefront: To display local currency during product selection via Shopify Subscription Widget 2.0
• Customer portal: To ensure subscribers are presented accurate pricing information (value and/or currency) while viewing or adjusting their subscriptions
• Merchant portal: To allow merchant users to view the currencies of transactions and subscriptions within the portal or on data exports
• API: For merchants looking to build custom solutions and experiences, Recharge will also surface currency information across subscriptions, orders and charges API resources
• Notifications: Currency awareness that is built into our email notifications and also supported within our Klaviyo integration 

Note: For a complete list of capabilities and considerations, please read our help center documentation. 

What does this mean for our merchants? 

As we spoke to our merchants, it became clear that multi-currency support represents a significant opportunity to both accelerate revenue growth and reduce operation costs. 

“There’s enough confusion during the fertility journey already, we don’t want to add any additional burden onto our customers. That includes the confusion that comes with looking at a credit card statement and seeing  a currency conversion fee.”

Shannon Gallagher, Co-Founder & GM, Bird&Be

The following are just some of the key benefits merchants can expect: 

Accelerate their revenue growth via international expansion 

• By accepting payments in multiple currencies, businesses can attract subscribers from different parts of the world and increase their revenue.
• When customers are able to shop and pay in their own currency, they are more likely to complete their purchase. This helps businesses to reduce cart abandonment rates and increase their conversion rates.
• By offering a seamless and convenient shopping experience for customers in multiple currencies, businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors and attract new customers. This can lead to increased brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Manage a global presence via a lean and efficient organization 

• By reducing the number of region-specific stores they operate, merchants with a existing global presence can pay less in fees and save on operational overheads
• For certain stores, merchants can avoid expensive builds that are often limited in scope and challenging to maintain.
• Multi-currency can also reduce support burden and churn. For example: Subscribers purchasing in a foreign currency can get upset and confused when every recurring charge fluctuates due to changing conversion rates  
• Merchants can quickly, and at a low cost, test viability of new international markets without investing in a new region-specific storefront with localized currency offering

What’s next? 

2023 is an exciting year for us at Recharge, as we charge forward with an ambitious product roadmap. With multi-currency built into our foundation, we’re well placed to further extend the features into more products, including new releases. For example, currently available in our Early Adopter Program, the all-new Affinity customer portal theme will be launched with multi-currency support in addition to multi-language support.  

More importantly, we’re looking forward to feedback from merchants. If you’re an existing Recharge merchant on Shopify Checkout, check out help center documentation and enable multi-currency for your store. 

If you’re a merchant looking to migrate to Recharge, our implementation team is trained to migrate multi-currency merchants quickly and safely.  

The post Expand your business with multi-currency, integrated with Shopify Markets appeared first on Recharge.

Tip: To never miss a release, be sure to subscribe to updates and get notifications delivered directly to your inbox.

Bundles is now generally available

We kick-started August by announcing that Bundles is now generally available to all merchants using Shopify. This was a very exciting announcement for us and we thank all the merchants that participated in our open beta for Bundles and helped us build a great offering.  

With Bundles you can:

• Combine multiple SKUs into one product, saving customers time and effort through the value of your curation expertise
• Offer pre-set or customizable bundles, with options to strategically discount pricing 
• Allow your customers to adjust the items in their bundles after checkout via the customer portal, empowering them with ultimate order flexibility

You can learn all about Bundles in our announcement blog post. 

Note: Access to Bundles requires the Pro or Enterprise plan. 

Customer portal improvements for single payment methods

If your store uses a single payment method for your customer portal experience, then we have an update for you. The team at Recharge has made several enhancements to reduce support issues and provide customers with more self-serve tools. These updates include:

• Automated prompt when changing shipping addresses to allow customers to change for multiple subscriptions instead of just a single subscription
• New ‘payment methods’ page that consolidates all payment and billing information
• Within this new page, customers have the ability to add, delete, or edit payment methods and their associated billing information

Not sure if your store supports single payment methods? Click here. 

Stability enhancements on Shopify checkout & pre-paids

Guided by merchant feedback, we’ve released a set of updates for merchants using our Shopify Checkout integration. 

These general stability improvements further enhance the customer experience by improving error mitigation. These changes enable improved stability in tasks—such as multiple customers attempting payments at the same time while a store is processing a large number of recurring orders.

We’ve also rolled out general stability improvements for pre-paids.

Novum 4.2.0 Theme Engine version now available

All merchants on the Recharge Pro and Enterprise plan now have access to v4.2.0 of the Novum theme within the Recharge Theme Engine. V4.2.0 is also the new default version for all new stores onboarding to Recharge.

What is included in this update?

• UI improvements to Multiple Payment Methods
• Setting updates in compliance with the Automatic Renewal Law
• Support for the Bundles widget
• Support for the ‘Force Shopify customer account logins’ feature 

Note: The new Novum theme requires the ‘multiple payment methods’ feature to be enabled for your store. To upgrade, contact our support team. 

Stay tuned  

Be on the lookout for more updates in the Changelog feed.

The post Recharge Changelog recap: August 2022 appeared first on Recharge.

So—how can merchants accomplish this? To start, implement four simple, yet essential website best practices:

1. Centralize critical information for your subscription program
2. Highlight your subscription offering on your store’s home page
3. Reduce friction from the product page
4. One-click upsell one-time-purchases (OTPs) to a subscription while in cart

Now, let’s dive into each of these strategies to maximize your subscriber growth.

1. Centralize critical information for your subscription program

Understandably, customers can be hesitant to subscribe before they know exactly what they’re committing to. The most effective brands answer common subscription questions clearly on their website to build trust and confidence through transparency.

To accomplish this, create a dedicated subscription landing page, which you can link to in emails and other marketing campaigns. This page should consolidate information on topics like:

• Subscriber perks, such as discounts, free shipping, and loyalty incentives
• Popular subscription products and customer reviews for them
• Subscription cancellation and auto-renewal policies
• Logistics information, such as shipping timelines and customer support expectations
• Details on how customers can manage their own subscriptions, such as via the customer portal or transactional SMS 
• FAQs about your subscription program

Discover how to launch your own subscription landing page.

2. Highlight your subscription offering on your store’s homepage

Make it easy for customers to discover your subscription program by ensuring it is front and center from the moment customers arrive at your store. By featuring a few key perks of your subscriptions on the homepage, you can increase clickthrough rates to your subscriptions. For example, you might call out the convenience of a fully stocked pantry or the cumulative savings of a subscriber discount.

You can draw attention to your subscription program without overhauling the entire homepage. Start simple with a banner or call-to-action button. Consider linking the button or banner directly to a subscription landing page or collection of your subscription products.

Learn more about how to optimize your homepage for subscriptions.

3. Reduce friction from the product page

Customers decide whether or not to subscribe from your product detail page (PDP), so make sure to plan this page carefully. There are three main strategies top subscription companies explore to build an effective PDP:

1. If offering both a subscription and one-time purchase option, set the subscription option as the default. Recharge merchants can accomplish this easily through their widget settings.
2. Create a custom modal to reinforce the value of subscriptions. Your modal could highlight subscription perks (e.g. free or priority shipping), flexible cancellation policies, or other unique benefits of your offerings.
3. Link back to your subscription landing page. Free up plenty of real estate to maximize the value of your PDP by prominently linking to the landing page.

Learn how to highlight subscriptions on your product pages.

4. One-click upsell one-time-purchases (OTPs) to a subscription while in cart

Every touchpoint on your website can be a subscription upsell opportunity, including the shopping cart. A subscriber discount becomes even more persuasive at the moment your customer reviews their cart total and considers their budget.

A cart upsell modal reminds one-time customers of exactly what they’re missing before they finalize their decision. You can build your own or leverage a paid integration like Rebuy to launch the modal for you.

Walk through how to create a cart upsell modal.

Ready to get started?

By implementing these best practices, you can not only boost your subscription sales, but also create better customer experiences that increase LTV and brand loyalty. For step-by-step directions on each of these strategies, read our four guides:

• Centralize critical information for your subscription program
• Highlight your subscription offering on your store’s home page
• Reduce friction from the product page
• One-click upsell one-time-purchases (OTPs) to a subscription while in cart

Looking for even more industry expertise? Consider collaborating with an agency partner for additional support.

The post Maximize your subscription growth with these 4 website improvements appeared first on Recharge.

This has not gone unnoticed by cybercriminals either. According to the 2020 Trustwave Global Security Report, the retail industry was the most-targeted sector for cyberattacks (at about 25%) for the third year in a row. All this means that, unlike a traditional brick and mortar retailer, ecommerce merchants are now required to prioritize privacy and security in their technology investments. 

At Recharge, we’re proud to have grown up with our merchants. This has allowed us to learn and design a product that they can trust. Trust is a powerful word and for us, it means delivering on four key promises: Privacy, security, availability, and compliance. 

Putting your privacy first

To support the privacy goals of our global merchant community and partners, we’ve built a comprehensive set of policies that adhere to guidance from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). This includes clearly stating what information is collected, stored, accessed, and processed. These policies also outline our obligations to merchants and their customers so they’re empowered to expect the best from Recharge.  

Building security into everything we do

Privacy is nothing without robust security practices. At Recharge, we are proud of our dedicated 24/7 Security Operations Team and Product Team’s deep commitment towards a secure software development lifecycle. We believe security is a team effort, including vulnerability reporting through independent parties. In addition to utilizing the security features of Google Cloud Platform (GCP), we use modern data encryption techniques, network monitoring, and access management systems to ensure security is never an afterthought. 

Keeping your business online

To ensure resilience and availability of business-critical and merchant-facing services, we’ve operationalized a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery program. More importantly, we’re committed to accountability through transparency with our merchant accounts and partners. Therefore, we maintain a publicly accessible status page where anyone can view the real-time availability, uptime, and incident status associated with our offerings. 

Adhering to industry standards

It’s not scalable and reasonable to expect merchants and partners to conduct in-depth technology assessments every time they’re selecting their technology partner. So we’re committed to making that decision easier by acquiring certifications and attestations that are recognized as industry standards. We’re currently certified as per Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and recently completed our Service Organization Control (SOC2) Type I attestation report. 

As we continue to further strengthen our infrastructure and processes, we’re also taking important steps towards information accessibility by creating the Recharge Trust Center. Available on our public website, the Recharge Trust Center will act as a single location to discover and learn about all our commitments, latest policies, and additional information on our four key promises. We’re also working hard to make it much easier for merchants and partners to access relevant documentation through the Recharge Trust Center. 

These updates would not be possible without the trust placed in us by the thousands of merchants, partners, and the independent security researcher community. We look forward to more feedback from all of you and sharing the updates through our trust center.

The post Security best practices for ecommerce merchants appeared first on Recharge.