01. Loading speed of the customer portal

For any ecommerce store, fast speed is the single most important factor that contributes to a great customer experience. That’s why Loop has built its customer portal that loads just like a mobile app. Try out our public DTC customer portal on Shopify.

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‍As this Shopify Plus publication puts it, “Site speed has a price tag”. We believe it’s the same for customer portal speed. And in the case of the latter, the price is related to your most loyal customers, i.e. subscribers.

Takeaway: Make sure your customer portal loads as fast as your product page. Use the same tools to do a speed test of your customer as your product page.

02. Proper CTAs that are visible

Take any CRO guide on the net, and the basic tactic that you will come across is to have proper CTAs on your product page. We have incorporated the same CRO philosophy while designing our customer portal 

For different subscriber actions, we have different CTAs - Swap, Pause, Skip or Cancel.

All CTAs must be visible and readily accessible by your customer. We have seen this issue with supplements brands where the subscriber audience is not tech-savvy and are usually in the age group of 50s-70s.

The design of these CTAs can be easily customized as per the theme of your store. A well-defined CTA improves click rates and drives customer action.‍

Takeaway: Make sure CTA element is clearly visible, accessible and stands out.

03. Easy Upselling options inside the portal

eCommerce shoppers just love options. That’s why there are recommendation options on higher-converting and optimized product pages.

Upselling is one of the main ways to increase AOV (many shopify upsell apps are available to do this on PDP). That’s why we have built a feature to upsell recommended products to subscribers within the customer portal. And this is one of the most used features of our portal.

These recommendations are powered by our app’s backend end and are based on your subscribers’ existing orders. ‍

Takeaway: With the holiday season right around the corner, a great way to promote your holiday themed products is to upsell them to your existing subscriber base.

04. Incentivizing customers through rewards

Discounts are for first time purchases and rewards are for your subscribers. This is classic CRO. Nothing new here.

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What matters is how you visually highlight discounts on the product page or rewards on the customer portal.

That’s why we have designed the rewards journey banner as a key element within Loop’s customer portal. It’s prominently displayed when someone logs into the portal to manage their order. By showing this information upfront to the subscriber, it gamifies the entire experience of shopping and has also shown to reduce subscription cancellations

Takeaway: Take time and come up with a subscriber rewards strategy- Freebies after X orders, special discount after Y orders, membership after Z orders. Using Loop, it's simple to set up workflows to automate and personalize rewards for subscribers depending on the number of orders they have completed

Why make the effort to invest in Customer Portal Optimization?

Investing your time in optimizing the portal can bring in great returns. Take the example of The Girlfriend Doctor, a DTC brand helping millions of women across the world. Shifting to a better customer portal experience reduced subscription-related support tickets by 40%! 

We also actively seek feedback from our merchants over the utility of our customer portal, to make sure it’s the best that’s out there!

An optimized customer portal helps in reducing subscription cancellations and retaining revenue loss. We have also built cancellation flows within our customer portal that helps with customer retention.

If your current subscription app doesn’t give you the flexibility and customization to optimize your portal, then you might consider switching to one that does it for free (ahem ahem!).

Time to upgrade your customer portal experience? ‍

Book your migration call here