On today's episode, we are going to talk about WordPress subscription renewals right here on Your Website Engineer Podcast, Episode No. 293. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Your Website Engineer Podcast. My name is Dustin. I'm coming to you from Germany this week. That's right, I am on a work trip in Berlin, with some of the Wu Commerce team, and we are working together. We're making our products better. We are just having fun in person, and so that's why we've got a little bit shorter of an episode today. Alright, the first thing that I want to share with you today is WordPress 4.6 Beta 2 is now available. This is development software, of course, but they've made some changes. They've done a lot of developer level changes in this beta version, and it fixed a lot of issues.

There's more than 50 changes and bug fixes from the last version. It looks like there'll be about a beta every week or so until we get to the release candidate, and we're still shooting for a middle of August release for WordPress 4.6. The other update by way of Automatic is Jet Pack 4.1, and Jet Pack 4.1.1 has been released, and it's now out in the wild. A few things that have happened, there's been feature and UI improvements to the secure sign-on module. So this is where you have two factor authentication that allows you to sign in to your WordPress by using your wordpress.com username and password. So that's been fixed and made a little bit nicer. They've also added two new buttons in your sharing settings, so you can now share your posts on both Telegram and WhatsApp, if you're using a mobile device.

They've also added a new short code, or they've improved the short code for recipes. So if you have a recipe type blog, it will format and publish recipes much nicer. And if you are using Untapped, which is a – it's a social network for drinking beer, that has the ability to now put in a short code to display some of your latest check-ins and whatnot. They're also hardening the Jet Pack security. They're making it more secure, and they're trying to make sure that when attacks happen, they're just making sure that those people are locked out of the websites. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that's been updated in Version 4.1, and you can view the change log, and there's a link to that in the show notes for Episode No. 400 – I mean 293.

Two more things in the way of news, and this is there is a new wucommerce.com, and this is basically the entire Wu Themes website has been rebranded to wucommerce.com. There's a whole article about this written over on wucommerce.com, and I'll let you read that if you're interested in that. But the [inaudible] [00:02:50] about that is basically they're moving the focus of all of the plug-ins and whatnot to wucommerce.com because it's just a better place. It's kind of funny to say, "Oh, you need to go get Wu Commerce or this Wu Commerce extension, but you have to go to wuthemes.com. So just kind of working on branding and trying to make things a little bit easier, a little bit more streamlined and simpler for brand new people to find Wu Commerce and to find the extensions and the plug-in.

Right now wuthemes.com will redirect to wucommerce.com, and so we're still working on themes. We're still actively developing Storefront and Canvas, but all of the themes have also been moved to wucommerce.com. So that's basically just the announcement. Wuthemes.com just rerouting, and it's just another project that's happening inside of Automatic. Then lastly is a Chrome extension that was created by someone over at – by Kellen Mace over at Web Dev Studios. And this is an extension you can install in Chrome and it will allow you to go from the front end to the back end of your website without having to reach for your mouse or track pad. You can do Command Shift A on a Mac or Ctrl Shift A on Windows or Linux. It does the following. If a logged out user is on the website, it will send them to the login page.

If a logged in user is on the front end, on the post edit screen, it will send them to the post edit screen for the page, post or custom post tab that they're looking at, which is pretty cool. So if you're looking right at a post, and then you hit Command Shift A, it will take you back to the dashboard, which is really nice. And it sends logged in users from the admin to the corresponding front end page, if you are on a post, page or custom post tab. It's really, really slick. It works awesome. It is such a neat little simple tool that I'm sure that we'll get used to using this, a keyboard shortcut, and when you go to somebody else's computer and you try to use it, you're like, "Why doesn't this work? Why shouldn't this – this should be built into WordPress." It feels like something that would just be – something that could be built into a version of WordPress.

So that is something to check out. I've got a link to that in the show notes as well. And lastly, let's go ahead and talk about the plug-in of the week, kind of get all this news section at the beginning of the show all kind of taken care of. And this one is one that I found, when I was at Podcast Movement this week, I was helping somebody figure out how to reset their site. They basically had duplicated their site, but then they wanted to kind of start fresh. They wanted to kind of wipe it clean, and it wasn't that they were spending a lot of time trying to figure out – they just didn't want to completely wipe out WordPress, like uninstall WordPress and then reinstall WordPress because that was an extra step. But they wanted to just pretty much reset everything.

Because they were using Headway before, and then they had moved on to another theme, and then they moved on to another theme, and they wanted to just get rid of all the settings, just kind of get a fresh start and a clean slate. So the plug-in that I found for them, and this is the one that we're going to talk about this week, is called WordPress Reset. And it allows the WordPress database to go back to its defaults. So it will have that default post, that default comment, that default page, and all that, just the way that WordPress comes right out of the box. It deletes all customizations and content, so anything that's kind of database driven. But it does not modify files. So that means all your plug-ins will stay there.

All the settings and whatnot will be wiped out and you'll have to reset all of those up. But this is basically, if you want to just kind of do a reset of your website, maybe you've duplicated it, so you can get all of your plug-ins over to a new development server or whatnot, but you want to just kind of start over. Then what you could do, once you've reset it, is you could do an import or an export or use WP Migrate DB Pro, or a similar type of plug-in, to pull in just the pieces that you need. Maybe the posts, the pages, the comments, you know, that type of stuff. You could do that without pulling in all the options and the settings and whatnot. So if you're looking for some sort of plug-in to do this, WordPress Reset is the perfect one.

Another good example to use this for would be maybe if you are running a classroom type setting or you're running a course and everybody has a – you want to set up a default install for everybody, so they have that right up starting out of the gate, then WordPress Reset might be the perfect plug-in and you just run that, and it pretty much zeroes everything out at the end of the course. So that is WordPress Reset, and you can find it in the WordPress plug-in repository. It's got 20,000 active installs, and it's got a 4.6 star rating out of 5. Alright, today we are going to talk about WordPress subscription renewals, and just a little bit about that, how we can make sure that we are communicating well with our customers to make sure that we are staying in compliance with all the rules and regulations that are out there about charging for subscriptions or re-occurring payments.

And if you've been in the WordPress space for a while, or have just kind of looked around for things on the WordPress community, that a lot of plug-ins these days are coming with a one-time fee, but then a yearly subscription fee to continue getting support and to continue getting updates for their plug-ins. It makes a lot of sense for a plug-in author, or a plug-in developer because they've taken the time to write this amazing plug-in, and they found a customer, they've gotten a customer, but then they don't need – every year, they don't want to find all brand new customers. So they hook them in with their software for a one-time fee, and then to continue to get updates and support, then that's when they ask for a re-occurring subscription.

And usually that re-occurring subscription is less than the normal amount. It's usually pretty typical here in the WordPress space, so you might buy a plug-in for $99.00, and then your annual renewal fee is usually 50 percent less. Sometimes people like i-Themes, they'll give you a 40 percent off discount or whatever when it comes time to renewing or whatnot. So that's kind of the WordPress space these days. It's becoming very – it's very common practice for developers to do this. And it makes sense. You don't want to have to pay for – the developers don't want to have to support their plug-in for free for life, and they want to be able to spend time developing and making money while they're making their plug-in better and safer and more secure.

Now one thing that we want to think about and we need to remember when we're doing subscriptions and we're doing those auto renewals, whether that be some sort of product that you're selling in your Wu Commerce store that renews every month or once a week, or if it's software like this and it's renewing every year or every six months or whatever, you want to make sure that you're in compliance and you're following the rules. I'm not going to go into all of them, but there are different rules in different states that focus on, you have to give disclosure about the renewal, and how you present the details is more about the decision for the buyers to be making a decision versus just auto charging them, and then giving them a notice later. I know that domain companies do this really, really well, or Hover does it really well.

They will give me a notice like 90 days before, like, "Hey, your subscription's coming up and in 30 days you're going to have a domain renewal in 30 days or whatnot." And so they do a really good job of presenting you the, hey, this is coming up, just giving you a heads up type of a deal. This helps out tremendously because now I'm prepared for and I'm ready. Customers and myself, myself included, do not like to open your email and see that I was charged $100.00 for something that I bought two years or last year, and then I used it for a couple days or a couple months. It didn't really work for me. I was outside the refund window, so I just went ahead and didn't – just kind of didn't use the plug-in anymore.

But now the developer doesn't know that I'm not using the plug-in. They're not sure. Their automated system just automatically charges me. So that's something that we need to think about. We have to make our system smarter and we have to make sure that we're doing the right things to let people know that, hey, you're about to be charged, or you want to give them the ability to say, "Yes, I really enjoy this software, and yes, I want to renew when that time comes up." So something that I think that – kind of an outline that I think would be a really good template for auto-responder email messages should be, is something along the lines of like, the first day after they buy a product, you want to send them a receipt or a thank you.

I guess that's the day of. So somebody buys your plug-in, you're going to send them a receipt and a thank you on the day of. Maybe on Day 3, Day 4, you're going to give them a follow-up message and say, "Hey, do you have any questions about my plug-in? Did you have any problems setting it up? Is there anything that I can answer?" just as a friendly, you know – and it all can be automated as well, but you're giving that extra touch point, like saying that you really care and you're invested in helping this customer achieve what they want by buying your plug-in. A few days later, maybe Day 5, 6, 7, you could give them some tips on how to use their purchase. I know that there was a plug-in keyboard, Maestro, that I installed on my computer, and every four, five, six days, I got more tips on how to set up this and how to set up this and how to do this and configure this.

It was really helpful because I might have forgotten that I installed that software because it's not something that I'm used to using quite yet. So this was really great. I really enjoyed this. So on Day 4, 5, 6, give them some tips on how to continue using their purchase. On Day 30, so they're one month in, ask them how it's going. See if you can improve anything. Is there anything that's lacking in your software? Is there something that just causes them to be really, really concerned, or it's not easy to use, or I wish this would be better, or this is making me pull my hair out? Things along those lines. Just ask for feedback, and then listen if somebody actually responds.

Day 90, so three months in, check to see if they have any questions, any more feedback. Just continue that conversation, continue that dialog. Just let them know that you care and that you are there. Again, in the back of your mind, yes, you want them to renew when that time comes around. But you can also really be concerned and caring for the people that are using your plug-in and using your product. On Day 80, half a year in, six months in, you can send them a tutorial on advanced uses of your product. You could do this earlier if you want. You could set this up so you can just send them like, "Hey, I bet you didn't know you could do this with this plug-in." Or, "Have you checked this out?" Or, "We just added these keyboard shortcuts."

Or, could you – you know, there's hundreds of different things that you could do on Day 80. You could do it once a month after that six-month period. You know, just different ways to continue to get yourself in front of your customers and the people that are using your plug-in. Around Day 300 or so, you're about 60 days out, about two months from the time that it's renewing, so we're talking – I guess they bought it January 1, we're talking like the end of October – you want to check in to see if they write a review, maybe write a testimonial. How well the plug-in's working for them, how much time it saved for them. Give them some sample prompts. Like say, "Hey, you know, here's some suggestions on how you could help me write a perfect testimonial, or you could help display this on your website as a developer."

So that's something you could think of. And then maybe Day 330, maybe Day 340, just say, "Hey, renewal's coming up, and here's ways that you can renew." If it's auto-renew, "Here's ways to undo if you're no longer using it. If you're no longer using it, I'd love to hear why." You could ask for this information and ask for this feedback. And this is just kind of a broad level overview. You could go into way, way more detail. You could have campaigns going out once a week or once a month, and just spending time really diving in and learning from your customers and how you could make your product better. Because that's one thing that they're not going to forget that they've installed this plug-in. If they have – if on Day 90 you send them a message and they've unsubscribed, then that might be a good way to – whether that be manually following up, or in some capacity, or if you could take them off the auto-renewal list or whatever.

Just make a more personal experience, and then just this auto-charging controlling thing. It makes you sound almost like Time Warner Cable and the fact that you can't cancel online. You actually have to call somebody. You're making it difficult and it's just like a burden, and you're like, "Oh, well, I'll let them charge me another month because it's just too big of a hassle to call them." So that's one of the big things when it comes towards the end. Yes, you want to make it easy for people to cancel. You don't want to make people jump through hoops because then they're just going to get mad anyways when it comes to canceling. If they're going to cancel, they're going to cancel anyways. You don't want them to spend extra time and get frustrated with ways to cancel.

I know that just a silly example is that the company that we buy diapers for, for our daughter, you cannot cancel online. You have to call to cancel the auto subscription. Which is really, really silly. Granted, they do support via Twitter, so it you send them a Tweet, they'll actually cancel it, so you don't have to call. But they just make that a little bit harder. So then we end up getting more diapers if we can't cancel in time or whatnot. And so that's kind of what I wanted to share with you. That's the main gist. You can do a lot of this with your auto-responder series within your newsletter provider. So if you're using something like Convert Kit, that's a perfect place to do auto-responders and link to your store so it knows and tags somebody as a customer. As soon as they're tagged as a customer, they will go ahead and automatically start getting these drip emails, and you never really have to think about it.

You set it up once. You spend a couple hours just writing up what your messages could be, and go ahead and go from there. Let them auto-respond. This is another perfect thing to do if you are a developer or you have clients on subscription or renewal basis. Maybe they signed up for a hosting package that renews once a year, or maybe they are a client that you – you're doing certain things for them every single month, and they pay you a retainer or whatnot. Just constant communication and let them know what you're doing and how your service is better than other services, and make it super easy for them to continue paying you, and make it super easy for them to cancel if they want to break ties and go another route.

So that's what I wanted to share with you today. The one other thing that I do want to say before I get out of here is about the Flywheel sale that's happening, and you can find out more at yourwebsiteengineer.com/flywheel. And basically, if you pay for a full year up front, and plans start as low as $15.00 per month, they'll give you three months free. So essentially it's $45.00 times nine months, is – I did that wrong. It's $15.00 times nine months, and that's $135.00 for VPS type – they treat you like a VIP – but it's actually – it's very much similar to a VPS. It's WordPress hosted. It's WordPress dedicated hosting. It's really, really good. I love Flywheel. And so for $135.00, you can get an entire year's worth of hosting, which the experience is going to be so much better than on the shared hosting sites.

And they will completely move your site over there for free. So with that, that's going to wrap up this episode. I am going to get back to Germany. I'll be there for a few more days before I head back, and then I'll record next week's episode right here in my house as well. So until then, we'll talk to you later. Take care. Bye-bye.