The Proposal
Shave & Subscribe is an online subscription service that supplies its high volume of customers with regular shaving products directly to their homes. For their customers to receive this convenient service, the Shave & Subscribe’s site required a facility that could take monthly payments from customers from a carefully designed and easy-to-use website platform; Shave & Subscribe needed to provide people with a professionally produced payment method with all the necessary eCommerce tools to ensure positive and efficient customer service.
The Process
The initial part of the process was to set up an online merchant system that was capable of accepting automated card payment transitions, specifically with the ability to deal with recurring payments.
The second major challenge was the client’s insistence on using Magento as the front end platform, as they wanted to have an open-source site that was not bound by a template.
The third major challenge was to add a single added payment at a discounted rate for the razor blade handle. This singular payment would be added to the basket but then wouldn’t be added to the remaining payments of the monthly subscription.
In our search for a dynamic content management system (CMS) we decided to use a system called CrateJoy, which allowed the team to also build a bespoke front-end design in Magento and to then connect them. The web design team then created a homepage with anchor points once each step was complete. To make the user experience as seamless as possible, we created a three-step process: blades, frequency, order.
Castle then designed and built a module within the coupon code facility to offer a discounted handle price. The coupon code feature allowed us to add the transaction to one singular payment for the first purchase and not be included in the remaining payments.
The Results
Shave and Subscribe’s original payment system, PayPal, was unstable and during the upscaling process broke several times, which led to us being awarded the contract to rebuild. Like many online merchant systems, PayPal finds it difficult to manage recurring payments.
With our hybrid site, Castle has been able to contribute to the site’s 12,000 subscription list, an increase of 4000%. The system Castle provided remains stable.