When Shipping Needs to Work for Subscriptions
If you’re trying to sell internationally, then you know how tricky the rules and regulations can be. Technology can bridge that gap, but getting it right can mean a lot of costly configuring and implementation.
Renova Worldwide short-circuited their dream of global subscriptions by leveraging two integrations: ShipperHQ and the Autoship Cloud plugin powered by QPilot. Read on to see how they launched repeat orders worldwide and grew repeat customers 70% in just 6 months.
Does Shipping Matter for Your Subscriptions?
If you need more control over shipping and delivery on subscriptions, Autoship may be the right solution.
It only takes a moment to find out for sure.
About Renova
Renova Worldwide’s story starts with a family tragedy—the loss of co-founder Tony Stephan’s wife in 1994. In the wake of the heartbreak, Tony sought treatments for his children’s mental health challenges. Finding no solutions effective at alleviating their symptoms, he turned to nutritional science for answers.
By experimenting with micronutrient formulations, Tony was able to find a recipe that promoted healing and stability for his children just two years after his wife’s passing. After that, the next steps seemed obvious: refine the formulation, and find a way to get it into the hands of others who need it.
As the product was refined, and as research began supporting its effectiveness, Tony began seeking business partners to help him extend the brand’s reach. In 2012, he met just such a business partner. Scott Malone joined Tony in his mission to get the product into as many hands as possible.
Several more formula refinements and a new company launch later, Tony and Scott were ready to take their supplement worldwide in 2019. They just needed a way to manage all of the logistics.
The Need
In order to get their products into the hands of the people who need them, Renova had to have a system to manage orders and shipping. More specifically, they needed:
- A system to broker shipping rates with a variety of carriers for a variety of packages/products
- A system to allow for autoship functions in the user experience
- A way to connect the two so the whole system is automated
Additionally, in order to fulfill the “Worldwide” part of the company moniker, they needed a system that could handle all of this on a global scale. Imagine having to build a shipping system that works for every region you want to ship to. Put simply: it’s a nightmare.
Or, at least, it could have been. Here’s what they were facing.
The Problem
When Renova began the search for the tool they needed, what they found was a lot of plugins and APIs, but no actual solution. They could tell they needed to integrate no fewer than three separate plugins to make the system work, including:
- Shipping Rate Table Plugin
- USPS Plugin
- FedEx Plugin
Beyond that, they needed custom code on their WordPress site to make automated, repeat shipment orders available to their customers. Finally, they needed to account for multiple shipping methods on their ERP.
Their initial efforts to turn their vision into a reality resulted in a jerry-rigged system that didn’t actually fulfill its purpose the way Renova wanted. So they decided to try again. This time, though, they had help.
Does Shipping Matter for Your Subscriptions?
If you need more control over shipping and delivery on subscriptions, Autoship may be the right solution.
It only takes a moment to find out for sure.
The Solution
By utilizing the QPilot autoship engine, and by integrating it with the ShipperHQ shipping rate management platform, Renova was able to build a fully-functional, exhaustive ecommerce shipping experience.
The solution does everything. It enables customers to select autoship for their orders, making them recurring deliveries. It empowers Renova to find the best shipping rates, no matter where in the world the package is headed. It takes Renova’s complicated order process and automates it.
The ShipperHQ integration gives Renova a fast and seamless checkout experience for shipping options. As for QPilot’s scheduled orders, Renova uses it to:
- Consolidate multiple carriers (like USPS and FedEx) into one ShipperHQ integration
- Use carrier rates alongside flat rates in their shipping rates for scheduled orders
- Automatically update scheduled orders to the lowest cost, whether that’s a flat rate or a carrier/SHQ rate.
ShipperHQ allowed Renova to set up shipping rules so that free shipping would be automatically enabled in checkout when trial packs are added to the cart. In the last year, they have also adapted their shipping strategy to meet the new surge in consumer demand for convenient in-store pickup experiences. With ShipperHQ, Renova was able to quickly adapt to changing shopping habits by offering an alternate delivery option, BOPIS, in their checkout.
Best of all, QPilot and ShipperHQ both work via integration with WooCommerce on WordPress, so very little code is actually running on Renova’s site. This allows the cloud-based web services to do the heavy lifting.
The Results
The QPilot/ShipperHQ integration enables Renova to ship across multiple carriers and deliver to multiple countries with only one shipping implementation and a single carrier integration. The result has been some significant increases in sales.
Renova launched on QPilot in July 2020. Since then, they’ve seen over 3,000 scheduled orders, a growth rate of 70% since joining the QPilot platform. They’ve also processed more than $800,000 as of Jan 2021. It’s an impressive level of growth for a business that’s only been operating for two years.
Conclusion
Building your own software/API to get these features would be difficult…if all the working pieces weren’t readily available. QPilot empowers businesses to offer smooth, compelling autoship and subscription UX to their customers. And with the right build, it can integrate directly into a shipping manager, simplifying the logistics of the business.
So if you’re ready to give your team—your whole business, even—the tools they need to carve out a niche in the marketplace, get in touch. We can help you get on the right track.
Does Shipping Matter for Your Subscriptions?
If you need more control over shipping and delivery on subscriptions, Autoship may be the right solution.
It only takes a moment to find out for sure.