Whether you operate a straightforward eCommerce business that’s been doing well for years; or are getting your business off the ground, it’s important to shake things up and make sure you’re meeting your customers’ needs. And that’s what Pelcro’s here to help you with.
Our last blog “Your Guide to Getting Started Pt1.” detailed how to set up your initial configuration, introduced Pelcro’s email automation system, and broke down Pelcro’s authentication methods. Part 2 will dive into Pelcro’s available payment methods, how to set up your dynamic paywall, understanding Pelcro’s taxes, granting access to collaborators, and more.
Now, without further ado, let’s continue with our Guide to Getting Started.
Getting Started: Payment methods
Pelcro has built-in and Integration capabilities with the most powerful and flexible payment tools available today
Our billing tools allow businesses to charge customers for subscriptions, memberships, e-commerce, donations, and much more. And for potential clients that maybe aren’t comfortable with online payments, Pelcro allows companies to accept offline payments like cash, cheques, wire transfers, etc.
All card payment methods are available via our API and SDK, making it simple for businesses to accept payments on their web and mobile properties. Pelcro’s billing systems support all major credit card networks.
Supported Bank Cards:
Visa
Master Card
American Express
Discover
Diners Club
JCB
Digital wallets
Pelcro also supports other digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. However, additional verification steps are required to use them.
Apple Pay: To set Apple Pay up on Pelcro’s platform, download this host verification file, and ask your network administrators to upload it in the “.well-known directory,” which should be publicly accessible and sit at the root directory. Repeat this for each site that you enabled on Pelcro. When you are done, proceed to your site settings and enable Apple Pay by clicking on the checkbox.
Google Pay: There are no steps required to set up Google Pay. Everything is set up for you in the background of our services.
Offline Payments
Pelcro supports offline payments in the form of cash, check, or wire transfers. Processes are implemented across the platform to ensure all the necessary information is collected to ensure secure offline transactions.
Getting Started: Dynamic paywall
Not only does Pelcro allows businesses to choose between adding a metered or a premium paywall directly from the dashboard, but it also allows them to decide on whom to target with said paywalls. This will enable publishers to create multiple paywalls for different currencies, messages, prices, etc.
Companies can then decide to set their targeting based on the users’ locations, devices, interests, and much more. A/B testing is a crucial component that is enabled by creating multiple subscription plans and different targeting capabilities.
Features
Enable a number of free articles to provide
Control the interval of the number of free articles.
Edit titles and subtitles of the paywall flow.
Decide on whom to target with the paywall.
Dynamic pricing and currency based on the user location.
Segmentation capabilities
Geolocation
Engagement history
Customer properties
Newsletter properties
Adblock status
Content properties
Referral source
Device type
Open graph tags
Meta tags
Targetting
You can target the paywall to specific articles using The Open Graph Protocol (OGP) to tag the articles you want to target. Most content management systems have plugins or default features that allow you to control the “article: tag” embedded into the page.
For example, if you want to target articles tagged as “premium.”
1- Ensure those articles have the following “article: tag” metatag in the head of the HTML page
For example, if you want to target articles tagged as “premium.”
HTML
<html>
<head lang=”en”>
<meta property=”article:tag” content=”premium”>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Demo</h1>
</body>
</html>
2- Add the premium keyword to the product configuration in the targeting section in the field called “Meta tags”
SEO
Pelcro is designed to detect search crawlers and disable the paywall for them. This is done to ensure that the crawlers can read the content and index it in the search engine’s database. This behavior can be customized.
Enforcement
Our SDKs leverage a combination of cookies, IP, device-finger print to enforce a stringent paywall. These can be customized based on your needs.
Getting Started: Taxes
Pelcro’s platform makes it easy to collect and remit all the required taxes.
Configuration
Initially, a tax configuration would need to be implemented on your Pelcro account based on your business’s tax rules. You will need to document all these tax rules and provide them to your account manager.
Tax Inclusion vs. Exclusion
The tax module supports both tax exclusions and inclusion; this is configured based on the business’s preference.
Tax Rules
Tax rules are configured and stored on Pelcro’s platform to fulfill your tax needs. Businesses will need to supply all the tax rules that are required based on the user’s address. ***Note that tax rules are applied to the entire Pelcro account and cannot be customized per product or plan.
Tax Calculation
Depending on the business tax rules and the customer’s shipping address, the tax per subscription will automatically be calculated; this will also be applied to all associated invoices.
Reports and exports
All tax calculations are stored in our tax module and are available in exports for reference. The export of the taxes is segmented by month and currency and contains all references to the invoice, customer, and the calculated taxes. A summary of the taxes per month is also available in the export.
Getting Started: Collaborators
When you have several people accessing your Pelcro account, it’s best to set up individual collaborator accounts. You can set collaborator permissions to let others access your Pelcro account without giving them access to sensitive information.
Having collaborator accounts can also help you to keep track of recent changes and events. This feature is only available in the professional and enterprise plans.
A collaborator account can have one of the following levels of permissions:
Admin permissions – Allows unlimited access to your Pelcro account. The collaborator member can manage the account and the financial information.
Support permissions – Allows limited access to your Pelcro account. The collaborator can view customer and billing information and manage budgets; however, will not be able to manage the account itself or view financial information.
Import permissions – Allows access to the import tool in your Pelcro account. This can be used if you outsource data entry.
***Note that permissions can be customized for enterprise clients.
Getting StartedTesting
Before going live, it’s essential to learn about the different methods to test everything on Pelcro.
Test customer creation
Creating customers via the user interface should result in customers being reflected in your Pelcro account. This ensures that you have the right configuration in the deployment scripts.
Test credit card payments
Production account
In a production account, you will have to use a real credit card to test. Below are two different options:
Charge your credit card and refund it.
Create a 100% discount coupon and use it with your credit card.
Staging account
You can use test credit cards in a staging account (only available to enterprise clients), as shown below.
Go-live Pre-checklist:
Before you go live with the Pelcro implementation, we put together a list of items you should review to make sure you completed getting started correctly.
Setup
Below are some steps required to ensure you’ve configured Pelcro correctly.
Review the configuration guide – learn more here
Test all the user flows – learn more here
Add all your team members as collaborators – learn more here.
Ensure you’ve tested and validated all integrations with Pelcro
Conduct a full end-to-end quality assurance process on all user flows and functionalities
Admin
Review all guides from the left menu.
Structure your products, plans, and coupons in a way that makes it easy for you and your team to track your marketing and renewal campaigns easily.
Migration
Ensure that data is migrated into the Pelcro platform accurately by doing the following steps:
Validate that the total customers and active subscriptions are migrated into Pelcro is the same as in your previous system.
Ensure all open/past due invoices are migrated into Pelcro.
Test a sample of customers (20-50) and compare it to the previous system.
Ensure customer password reset email has been triggered during the migration.
Ensure that all valid credit cards associated with active subscriptions are migrated into Stripe and associated with the customer accounts in Pelcro.
Customer service
Make sure your customer service team has reviewed the support team guide here.
Accounting
Make sure to review and understand the accounting documentation outlined here.
Make sure that your Stripe account is set up and ready to go. Please also review all the settings in your Stripe account.
Ensure you collect taxes the right way according to the country’s rules and regulations and the region you operate in.
Configure the desired flow when an invoice goes unpaid. You can configure this in your Pelcro settings or your Stripe settings.
Final Thoughts:
At Pelcro we’re always striving to push our boundaries to make sure that our clients have all the tools they need to manage their subscription, membership, and eCommerce needs.
This concludes our “Guide to Getting Started.” You are now equipped with all the information you need to create your account and start integrating Pelcro’s platform onto your website.
Getting started has never been easier, sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo call with one of our experts and find out precisely what Pelcro’s platform can add to your business.
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