[Sigia-l] movie of the month muddle

[Katherine Lumb]

I'm hoping you all can help me out with a tough situation.

My team is redesigning an ecommerce website for a company that operates a subscription-based movie-of-the-month club. Members purchase annual subscriptions to receive a DVD by mail each month, which is theirs to keep forever. They can also purchase individual films from months prior to the beginning of their subscription period. Non-members can also buy individual films for a higher price.

The client makes most of their money from subscriptions; a smaller amount from subscribers who buy individual films from past years (they refer to this as "back-selling"); and a much smaller amount (as low as 5%) from "one-offs" (individual purchases by users who never subscribe). The client really wants to push subsriptions, and de-emphasize the ability to purchase one-offs; but they are unwilling to relinquish the profit from one-offs.

Here's the dilemma: 

My team advocates up-selling to non-members purchasing one-offs. In other words, a user visits the site, finds a title they want to purchase, and sees a clear call to action to add that film to their shopping cart. (There is also a call to subscribe in another column of the page, for cross-selling, but it doesn't distract users from their path of intent.) At checkout, users are encouraged to add a subscription to their cart, to receive a better price on the film in their cart and all future purchases of individual films.

My client doesn't like that approach. They feel it's too easy for users to buy the one film they want and never come back for a subscription. They want to put a very strong call to subscribe on pages where users can buy individual films, and de-emphasize the "add to my shopping cart" button.

We are implementing Microsoft Commerce Server. To the best of my technology team's knowledge, there is no way to remember and add a film to the shopping cart at checkout once the user changes gears to buy a subscription. In other words, a user who is interested in buying a particular film sees a strong call to action to subscribe, thinks that's the correct way to purchase a film, goes down that path, and then at checkout they have a subscription in their cart, but not the film they wanted to buy in the first place. 

I'm concerned that this will confuse and frustrate users. I feel that my client's business model is in direct conflict with an intuitive purchase path interaction. We've asked our client to consider changing their business model to allow only subscribers to purchase one-offs, but they are unable to give up the income.

How can I create an intuitive and satisfying user experience, and support my client's need to push subscriptions? 

Your guidance is appreciated.

Thanks,

K

Katherine K. Lumb   Content Designer
p 646.336.3418    f 646.336.3444 klumb at semaphorepartners.com

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Semaphore Partners    www.semaphorepartners.com