There is no denying that your website can be the most powerful marketing tool at your disposal. It is your salesman that’s working 24/7, and as such, could be a centerpiece of your marketing efforts. Since your website is the first stop for new visitors, providing a fast subscription process is crucial. This is to attract and retain customers.
The fact is, if your UX design and accessibility click with your target audience, your product prospers and grows.
To that part, sometimes you are not sure how to provide a smooth experience. Especially for the customer from registration to checkout. It might take lots of testing, time, and money to get all of that right. Still, you won’t be exploring your website’s ultimate potential. User authentication and authorization are already hard terms to swallow. Let alone apply them on your website to provide an innovative and quick registration and purchasing experience.
In this short guide, we’ll explain what customer authentication and authorization are. Additionally, how to provide a fast checkout and billing experience for your customers and increase your conversion rates. In simpler terms, how to enable a fast subscription process on your website.
What Is Authentication?
Authentication is the act of validating that users are who they claim. This can be done by name, username, email address, password, or just two or three of them combined. Email and passwords are the most common authentication factors and they are the first step in any security process. As a result, user authentication is crucial to understand when creating or improving your website’s login procedure.
When a user creates a new account, these credentials are automatically stored for any later account log-in.
What is Authorization?
Authorization is considered the process of giving the user permission to access a specific resource, function, or product. For example, when it comes to the popular streaming service Spotify, authorization happens when a user pays for a premium subscription. The user then gets access to all music tracks on the app without ads or interruptions. The company has authorized the user to have this model when they subscribe or upgrade after paying a certain amount of money.
In other cases, a user might be given access to a free product or resource, but either way, they have to be entitled to have it (i.e. An unauthenticated user may have some access to an application, although usually in a very limited capacity). This is why authorization can also be called “entitlement” and both terms are often used interchangeably with access control or client privilege.
In any case, the user must prove that they are who they claim to be, usually through an email verification, before an organization’s administrators grant them access to the requested resources.
Authentication vs. Authorization For A Fast Subscription Process: Key Differences
Let’s use an analogy to demonstrate the differences.
Imagine you went on a holiday where you rented a house or a villa to stay at. You reach the accommodation and the door is locked. That person needs:
Authentication: mainly in the form of a key or digital access to the house. The lock on the door only grants access to someone with the correct key. In the same way a system only grants access to users who have the correct credentials.
Authorization: mainly in the form of permissions. As soon as you get inside the house, you might only have access to certain rooms but not have access to other areas on the premises such as a private garden. You may be entitled to different things, such as access to free wifi and certain amenities.
Here’s a short summary of authentication vs authorization:
Billing And Checkouts
If you’re just starting out an online business and looking for a way to take payment from customers, you’d be surprised how complex the process can be.
There are different types of payment methods out there and they vary from business to business. You have to figure out which payment method will suit the nature of your business and at the same time appeal to your customers. For achieving profitability and success, it can be considered as a critical step. You can either look for different software that offers to fulfill each part of the registration and checkout process, or you can either find software that manages everything in one place.
In addition, payment should have all the necessary information guaranteed to provide your customer with what they want and should include shipping details if necessary. You have to also continuously improve your checkout, optimizing to make it faster, more efficient, and as frictionless as possible. Creating a convenient, easily accessible, and high-performing checkout will improve the buying experience for customers, reducing drop-off rates, and improving conversions.
The payment methods can range from checks and wire transfers to online payments such as credit cards, debit cards, and modern digital solutions such as Stripe, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. All of them should guarantee a fast subscription process for your customers.
The Status Quo in the Subscription Management Industry
Today, some online businesses utilize multiple software solutions to make ends meet when it comes to authentication, authorization, and billing. Other businesses use a unified platform to shape their strategy when it comes to the same process. These latter ones usually deliver faster, simpler, and more connected registration and payment experiences everywhere.
With multiple software, the customer can make a distinction on your website and can see that there are already different platforms integrated within it. In some cases, the software will redirect the customer to another page or another website to complete their payment, which usually leads to high drop-off rates and lower conversion rates. The same applies to your data and insights, as they will be divided across platforms and make it difficult to provide accurate insights.
With all-in-one software, you can allow your customers to complete a registration and checkout process in one single step and while they are on the same page. Also, you can get all of your customers’ data (i.e. their job title, company name, etc.) in one place instead of trying to piece all of the incomplete data from different software. Collecting accurate and unified data can also be highly beneficial to spot trends, make better-informed decisions at speed to optimize registration and payment flows, unlock the full value from every customer interaction, and have the full flexibility to achieve a fast subscription process.
Building Customer Support
Having one dashboard to control everything—canceling subscriptions, refunds, or updating account information—is always the best practice for your business and customers’ conveniences. If there is a need to include a customer service team in the loop to manage the process for you, that is already aware of what the customer wants and knows how to fulfill their needs, is always an advantage. A SaaS company may provide you with a customer service team on-demand that has knowledge of what the service provides and how to satisfy your customers.
Maintenance and Updates
Maintaining a habit takes effort, so what about maintaining a whole service infrastructure and making sure everything is working and stable? The hard truth is that all of this takes effort, money and time—luxuries that you might not be able to afford. Sure, you can ask the software providers to handle the issues for you, but they will probably cost a lot if you are dealing with multiple software platforms.
In this case, you can cut through the whole ordeal and look for a vendor that combines all these tools in one place to ensure around-the-clock maintenance to make sure the software is constantly stable.
Aside from ensuring the stability of the platform, relying on a comprehensive solution also provides you with the benefit of knowing you always have the latest features and functionalities without worrying about managing the updates yourself.
Case in point: Having one single source of truth results in having a fast subscription process and can add an unprecedented level of efficiency in every part of our business.
Here’s what a fast subscription process looks like when you have a single source of truth:
You set a dynamic paywall on your website
Product and pricing plans appear for the customer to choose from
Then, the customer types in their registration details to authenticate their account
They proceed to enter their payment information based on their preferred payment method
That’s it! The customer is now free to navigate your website as they please
In A Nutshell
The key to a great user experience, specifically a great subscription process, is making it work for both your users and your business. In essence, a well-designed registration and payment experience are about leading a user from one point to a final one where they can get access to the data or resources they need while cutting off everything that might stand in their path. Most people seem to understand this goal, but it can be a little bit complicated to achieve it.
You’ll quickly see that having a single source of truth to manage your business can be an extremely powerful way to build a fast subscription experience, bring in more revenue, and garner a strong base of loyal customers.
Manage Your Subscriptions And Drive More Revenue With Pelcro Today!
The key to a flexible and versatile platform is its ability to meet our clients’ needs, and no one knows that better than we do. Pelcro is a one-stop-shop to help your company manage its online business and drive its recurring revenue.
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