Membership Management in BigCommerce for Subscription Businesses

Subscription management revenue models have become one of the most effective ways to build predictive revenue. They increase customer lifetime value, build trust in the business, and are cost-effective for consumers. If you’re running a BigCommerce store and wondering how to set up a subscription membership as a product on your site, the good news is that you don’t need complex custom development to do it right. With SubscriptionFlow, you can turn any membership service into a fully customisable subscription model while keeping your checkout flexible, secure, and payment gateway friendly. 

Why Sell Memberships as Subscription Products in BigCommerce? 

Before getting to know how to sell your membership as a product, it’s important to understand how beneficial it is. Managing products is easier, and it streamlines business operations. As memberships are sold as products, they are dealt in a unified inventory within the same BigCommerce platform. Another significant improvement is in customer experience. Users prefer acquiring products more as they get instant access upon payment. Therefore, businesses treat memberships as purchasable products for easier management and scalability.

Key advantages of converting memberships into products are:

Familiar Purchasing Experience for Customers 

Customers access memberships the same way as they shop for physical or digital products. It gives them a known experience, reducing confusion and checkout abandonment. 

Simplified Store Management 

Memberships sold as products appear directly in your BigCommerce catalogue, making them easy to manage, update, and promote without any separate systems.

Easy Promotions and Pricing Management 

You can easily offer discounts, bundle deals, and pricing rules to the membership products just as you do with any other product available in your store. 

Centralised Order and Customer Management 

Each order is marked as a standard purchase that provides uninterrupted reporting, analytics, and customer management. 

Flexible Membership Structures 

You can provide multiple membership products, such as Basic, Pro, and VIP. This allows you to provide different levels of access, pricing, and benefits without changing anything in your storefront. 

Best Practices of Converting Memberships into Products

To get the maximum benefit of selling memberships as products, follow these best practices to make sure that your products remain clear, flexible, and conversion-focused. 

Create the Membership as a Standard Product 

For clarity and increased visibility, set up membership just like any other product in your store. Assign it a name and add a description. Just like all other products, make it purchasable through your regular BigCommerce product catalogue. With this, you can add any membership product to your usual storefront by keeping the process familiar and frictionless. 

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Clearly Define What the Product Unlocks 

You need to clearly define what the product offers. You need to list all product details, including the services it provides, describing what customers gain. You can also add exclusive content, discounts, early access, services, or community access. This will help customers understand what they get after a purchase.

Use Simple Pricing and Duration Labels

Just like a product description, it is important to make pricing clear. Avoid overcomplicating pricing. With transparent pricing, customers build trust in the business and make purchases confidently. 

Grant Access Automatically After Purchase 

Verify that the product is available as soon as a customer buys it. This can be achieved through automation. Through the provision of instant value, businesses can increase customer satisfaction. Automation also decreases the amount of work involved in administration, hence making the process smooth. 

Separate Product Purchase from Membership Logic 

Consider the product solely as the purchasing mechanism. Do not combine the management of access rules, expiration, and permissions with the product. This will keep your store organised and make any future changes easier to manage.

Communicate Terms Clearly on the Product Page 

Add product’s limitations, access duration, and renewal expectations clearly on the product page. Providing clear communication helps customers to differentiate between the product and membership and eliminates post-purchase confusion.

Track Membership Sales Like Product Sales

As memberships are products, track performance by using the standard order and customer reports. With continuous tracking, you can measure demand, optimise pricing, and plan future offerings. It also helps to determine whether your membership product is successful or not. 

Common Challenges of Selling Memberships as Products

While there’s an increasing trend of selling memberships as products, it is not that simple to execute successfully. Common challenges include: 

Communicating Membership Value Clearly 

Customers may struggle to comprehend the accessibility, advantages, and time limit while purchasing when a membership is listed as a simple product. 

Managing Access After Purchase 

Without proper automation, businesses struggle to grant instant access to the product, causing delays and inconvenience. 

Customer Confusion Around Terms 

Validity periods are often not described clearly on the product page, leaving customers unclear. It often causes abandoned cards and unsuccessful checkouts.

Manual Administration Overhead 

Without automation, the process of selling a membership as a product comes with an administrative overhead. This is because teams must manually handle access assignments, expirations, and support requests related to memberships. 

Checkout and Payment Constraints 

There are limitations that businesses encounter when dealing with international customers, localised payment options, or alternative checkout flows. 

Inconsistent Customer Experience

Businesses often struggle to provide seamless activation, notifications, and confirmations about the products. This undermines customer confidence and creates uncertainty. 

How does SubscriptionFlow work with BigCommerce? 

Built specifically for subscription management, SubscriptionFlow integrates seamlessly with BigCommerce. It directly resolves your problem of how to set up a subscription membership as a product, without making any changes to your store’s architecture. With SubscriptionFlow, you get complete control over billing, checkout, and customer data as you list your memberships as products. You can provide custom plans, appropriate pricing, multiple billing cycles, and set specific rules. SubscriptionFlow also enables you to integrate major global and localised payment gateways. 

Final Thoughts 

Selling subscription memberships on BigCommerce doesn’t have to be restrictive. With SubscriptionFlow, you can list any membership or product as a subscription, customise every detail and connect your store with major global and localised payment gateways. If your goal is to turn memberships into powerful subscription products on BigCommerce, SubscriptionFlow is built to make it happen smoothly, securely, and at scale.