User Tools

Site Tools


merchant_guide:packages

This is an old revision of the document!


Adding and Editing Packages

What a Package is

For a definition of what a Package is in the SubscriptionBridge system, please see the Glossary.

Adding a New Package

A package is a combination of a Product, a Plan, and optionally one or more Features. Therefore, to create a new Package if you need to start by picking the Product that it will include. To add a new Package to one of your stores, do the following:

  • Click on Stores in the Merchant Center navigation
  • Select the Store that you wish to work with
  • In the Packages section, select Products
  • Locate the Product that you wish to work with and click on Packages
  • SubscriptionBridge will display a list of Packages built with the selected Product. To create a new one, click on Add New Package

Main Feature Properties

  • Plan
    Select the Plan that you would like to use for this Package. If you don't remember the properties of a specific Plan, select it and click on Display Selected Plan's Details to load a window that shows you details about it. If you want to create a new Plan, you can do so without leaving this page by clicking on the Add Plan link: a window will appear and allow you to enter the new Plan's details (refer to Adding & Editing Plans for instructions). When you save it, the new Plan will appear in the Plan drop-down menu.
  • Product
    Shows the Product based on which you are creating a Package
  • Store
    Shows the Store for which you are creating a Package
  • Price
    Enter the Package price. This represents the regular subscription amount that your customers will pay when they subscribe to this product or service.

If the selected Plan includes a Trial Period, the following two fields will be displayed (the second one applies only if the Package includes a shipping product).

  • Trial Price
    Enter the price that customers will pay for this Package during the Trial Period. For example, if you want to offer a 30% discount for the first 2 months of a monthly, ongoing subscription to a certain product or service, in the Trial Price you will enter a price that is 30% off the “Price” entered above (i.e. 30% of the Package Price).
  • Trial Shipping Is Free
    This feature allows you to reduce the shipping charge associated with a subscription that includes a Product that requires shipping. For example, if you wanted to provide a free trial for a certain subscription, and the Product included in the subscription has\d a shipping charge associated with it, this setting would allow you to set that shipping charge to 0 for the Trial Period. If the Trial Price is also 0, the customer will be given a completely free trial.

Names & Descriptions

SubscriptionBridge supports a multi-lingual front-end (the Merchant Center, instead, is only available in English at this time). Therefore, you can add Names & Descriptions for your Products in each of the languages that you have activated for your store.

To do so, navigate to the Features page as described above, and then click on Names & Descriptions. On the page that is displayed to you, click on the “Add New Name/Description” button to add a Feature Name and a Description in each of the languages that you have activated for the selected Store. For example, in the picture below the Store has English, Italian, and Spanish as the active languages, and therefore names and descriptions were entered for each of them.

Enter a name and a description for any Feature in all the Languages active on the Store

On the Add New Name/Description page…

  • Language
    Select a language from the list of active languages for the Store. Languages for which you have already entered a name/description are not shown.
  • Name
    Enter a name for this Feature in the Language you have selected. This entry is shown to customers in the SubscriptionBridge front-end (e.g. in the SubscriptionBridge Shopping Cart, Customer Center and in e-mail Notifications).
  • Description
    Enter a description for this Feature in the language you have selected. This entry is shown to customers in the SubscriptionBridge front-end.

Once you have added names and descriptions in multiple languages, the Names/Descriptions page will present them using a tabbed layout where each tab corresponds to a different language. To edit any of the entries, click on the tab that represents the language that you need to edit, and click on the Edit icon (Edit Icon).

View/Edit Features

Why should a Package include Features

A Package may contain additional, optional Features that allow customers to add and remove various products and/or services to/from their subscription. For example, a gym membership may offer as optional services a “Towel Service”, a “Locker Rental Service”, and a “Laundry Service”, each for an additional fee that is added to the subscription amount when the Feature is selected.

Reasons for separating Features from the Product include:

  • You can let customers edit their subscription after they initially subscribe (via the SubscriptionBridge Customer Center or the SubscriptionBridge API). SubscriptionBridge allows you to automate this process.
  • You can better highlight those additional products and services
  • You can keep the subscription price low and let users add to it only if they wish to do so

Adding a Feature to a Package

To add a Feature to a Package:

  • Select a Store and click on Packages in the Packages section
  • A list of currently available Packages is displayed
  • Click on View/Edit in the Features column

A new page will display a list of Features that have been added to the Package.

  • Click on Add Another Feature
    • Feature
      Select a Feature from the drop-down
    • Price
      Enter a price for it. This is the amount that will be added to the Package Price to determine the total subscription amount paid by the customer. For example, if the price of a gym membership is 29.95/month and the optional “Locker Rental” service is $10, a customer that subscribes to the gym membership and opts to add the “Locker Rental” service will pay $39.95/month.

Features added to a Package

merchant_guide/packages.1247095208.txt.gz · Last modified: 2009/08/16 00:00 (external edit)