The advantage of an integrated cart

Modified on April 9th, 2020

An often overlooked but key ingredient to successful eCommerce subscription experiences is the ability to seamlessly subscribe as part of an optimized checkout process. 

Integrated Checkout is the ability for consumers to complete their subscription purchase and enrollment without being redirected to an external and often suboptimal checkout experience.  Ensuring that the enrollment experience for a subscription, membership or reorder program is seamlessly integrated with an optimized checkout will undoubtedly increase your recurring revenue conversion rates.

Unfortunately, most subscription solutions will send the consumer offsite to a separate checkout to handle a subscription order or mixed-cart scenario (when the consumer has both subscription and one-time order items in the same checkout process). 

When the checkout for recurring revenue programs is separate from the rest of a consumer’s checkout flow, consumer enrollment in subscription programs can diminish by as much as 40%. That’s far too much money for enterprises to risk losing when an alternative is so easily accessible.

Other significant disadvantages associated with having to manage two distinct checkouts are the behind-the-scenes duplication of everything: 

• Duplicate or separate payment processors
• Replication of all Promotional & Marketing programs
• Product Catalog duplication
• Loss of Conversion Funnel Tracking & Analytics

This offsite checkout will likely break the tracking and analytics associated with the upstream conversion funnel making it challenging to understand whether the cart was abandoned or successfully converted.

“Managing separate checkouts was a nightmare,” said one CMO of a major health and wellness brand.  “Not only was customer conversion reduced because offers could not be displayed in the cart, but merchandising efforts needed to be duplicated on many fronts – promotions didn’t carry over and SKUs were duplicated in the product catalog, to mention a few.”  

Previously, Shopify Plus brands and retailers who wanted to successfully manage a subscription program could not do so seamlessly through Shopify’s optimized checkout experience.  They required a separate checkout through another solution provider. Ordergroove has launched the first Integrated Checkout for subscription service on Shopify to help merchants maximize their subscription sales, streamline operational overhead, natively integrate marketing and promotional capabilities, as well as improve tracking and analytics. The days of losing that 40% of conversion is over — or at least, it should be.

Integrated Checkout is an essential tablestake of a successful recurring revenue program and we’re excited to be able to deliver our Relationship Commerce platform natively within Shopify’s checkout for Shopify brands and retailers.