The 18 months since March 2020 have been a veritable boom for retail subscription services. The sector has seen unprecedented growth in that time, with 142% more consumers having at least one retail subscription service than just one year ago.
Nevertheless, there are signs that this growth may be coming to an end. Nineteen percent of all retail subscribers now say that they plan to cut back on their subscriptions when the pandemic has 
subsided, leaving anywhere between 4.7 million to 17 million retail subscriptions at risk of cancellation. How can subscribers work to mitigate this risk and preserve their hard-won share of wallet as their customers look to cut back?
This is only one of the questions that the Subscription Commerce Conversion Index, a PYMNTS and sticky.io collaboration, set out to answer. We surveyed a census-balanced panel of 2,123 U.S. consumers about whether they use retail subscriptions, which types of subscriptions they use and how they plan to change their subscriptions in the future to get a first-hand account of what consumers now expect from their retail subscription providers — and how those providers can gain an edge in an increasingly competitive market.
We also investigated the online subscription sign-up processes of 204 leading digital subscription providers to determine how well they are meeting their customers’ shifting demands. Each provider was then assigned a subscription commerce conversion index score on a scale of 0 to 100, depending on how their subscription offerings met subscribers’ expectations. The higher the score, the better their overall user experience.
PYMNTS’ research shows that many subscribers who are looking to cut back on their subscriptions are doing so because they want to tighten their belts. Forty-one percent of those looking to cut back say they are doing so because they hope to reduce their monthly expenses, the most commonly cited reason of all. There are also many who simply want to go back to shopping in stores and others who would prefer to support their local merchants. It is therefore clear that retail providers may soon be faced with a rising pressure not only to provide cost-cutting features that can address their customer’s concerns but also to find new, innovative ways to add value to their subscriptions if they want to avoid being cut.
Addressing consumers’ financial concerns can go a long way in helping providers keep their hard-won share of wallet. Providers that offer discounts, free shipping, guarantee or refund policies and free trials consistently earn higher index scores than those that do not. Such features are most common among the providers with the 30 highest index scores in our study. Seventy-seven percent of these top performers offer subscription discounts, for example, compared to 56% of providers overall.
Discounts, free shipping and other cost-related features are only some of the several factors that have become key to delivering the type of subscription commerce experiences that consumers have come to expect. The new edition of the Subscription Commerce Conversion Index provides a holistic look at how providers can tailor their user experience to maximize conversion and retain customers.
To learn more about how retail subscription providers can get ahead in this rapidly shifting market, download the report.