Cabela's | Subscriptions Roll Out
role: director of ux and research // hours: 480 // conversions: 10% increase in MRR
01 | The problem
Bass Pro and Cabelas wanted to implement a subscription program to drive additional revenue and build customer loyalty. The program would be rolled out in phases, launching with an MVP plan and limited product line to gauge customer engagement, then a phased approach thereafter to scale. The goal was to capture more customer sales with monthly revenue vs recurring revenue.
02 | My Process
In order to bring this program to life within an expedited timeline slated to launch right after the holidays and kicking off after our annual code freeze my team dove into competitive research, compiling best practices from Baymard and started conducting customer interviews.
Key Findings
Designing for our users
“The benefit of always knowing that you have your lures stocked and sent to you at a discounted price is worth every penny. A curated subscription for lures based on seasonality or type of fishing would be fantastic at some point!”
- Bill the avid fisherman, lover of the great outdoors, educated bargain shopper.
After the completion of our research we developed user flows outlining the visual presentation of our key learnings. Key learnings included:
- Users prefer having the option to either one-time purchase or sign up for a subscription
- With many companies struggling to keep up with inventory demand users are more prone to opt into a replenishment model
- Displaying any savings, even if it’s as low as 5% is a strong incentive for users to sign up
- The presence of easy cancellation messaging increases subscription engagement
- Radical transparency on the subscription terms and order status e-mail communications such as reminders, out of stock items and giving the user the ability to manage their subscription is essential
- Never lead the user away from the path to purchase when communicating terms to avoid cart abandonment
03 | The Result
There are three common subscription models and our goal was to cater to each type based on our customer feedback while also servicing our merchant’s vendor relations and giving them the ability to provide a matrix of discount options:
Our first focus was to roll out the program on specific products such as coffee and beef jerky and eventually, more popular items such as baits for seasonal fishing types.
This was a combination of a Replenishment subscription model which lets consumers automate the purchase of commodity items coupled with a Bargain subscription. When our customers opted in to the “Save by Subscribing” program they had access to discounted prices and priority replenishment access to products.
Once customers sign up for the program we then layer in the second tier, a Curation model which is meant to surprise and delight the customer by providing new items or highly personalized experiences by leveraging the use of our 3rd party vendor, Certona.
Save by Subscribing has had an incredible amount of engagement since launch, we’ve already seen a 10% increase of monthly recurring revenue from the products in the program so there will be a more widespread launch in the coming months.
