How we built a subscription billing website for a FinTech Startup

Introduction

In this post, we review how we built an end-end subscription billing website and eCommerce platform for a fintech startup client BullsWatchlist. We cover various areas: WordPress, Woocommerce, GoDaddy Payments, YITH Subscription billing, email notification, and text messages.

The Client

BullsWatchList is a FinTech startup. They provide users with the latest stock tips in crypto, options, and a few specialized categories. Users get to subscribe to two monthly packages (regular and premium) and are billed on a monthly basis.  BullsWatchList tasked us with building a modern user-friendly website with smooth, flexible, and secure payment options that could cater to all major payment providers and shorten the user conversion journey. 

The Main Functionality

To achieve the client’s vision, the e-commerce site we built had the following main features: 

• A good website that articulates the value proposition to the users. It was imperative to ensure that we showcase the products offered from the get-go and keep visitors engaged and interested.
• Ability to select between two monthly packages. We decided to create two packages that would help us onboard first-timers with the least friction, as well as provide more high-end services to power-users.
• Cart
• Purchase with a credit card. Having the ability to use credit cards as a payment method gave us the flexibility to enable recurring payments on WooCommerce.
• Monthly billing. This was key to ensure a smooth experience for BWL’s customers and leverage subscription inertia.
• Access to a premium content area after purchase
• Email and Text Alerts. Trading and stock advice/tips platforms are extremely time-sensitive and even a few seconds of delay can result in thousands of dollars worth of profit or loss. Hence it was crucial to implement a notification eco-system utilizing real-time emails and SMS alerts.
• Account Management Dashboard

The site administrator needs to be able to:

• Publish content (in the form of stock tips)
• Manage orders
• Manage subscriptions
• Manage users
• Manage payments

The Tech Stack that we selected

After evaluating several options, we settled on the following tech stack:

• Domain Name = GoDaddy
• CMS = WordPress
• Ecommerce = Woocommerce 
• Hosting = GoDaddy Woocommerce Package (Link)
• Credit Card Payments = GoDaddy Payments
• Subscription Billing = YITH for Woocommerce (Link)

Implementation: The Main Site Content

The entire site was designed by Exemplifi and approved by the client. We then built the site from scratch on WordPress using the Gutenberg Block Builder. 

We wanted to empower our client Bullswatchlist to be able to make future changes to their website at their own convenience. Hence using the Gutenberg builder provided us with powerful WYSIWYG editing capabilities which were intuitive, user-friendly, and easy to implement.

We wanted to ensure SSL security, 99.99% uptime, and super-fast page loads for the website. This led us to set up the site on the GoDaddy hosting package

and launched using the GoDaddy Domain Names service.

Implementation: Enabling E-commerce

The Woocommerce plugin from WordPress provides all the needed eCommerce functionality including the following:

• Product Page
• Cart
• Purchase
• Payments
• Account Creation
• My Account Dashboard
• Order Generation

When the user selects a package

They are taken to the product page showcasing the product price and a description of its features.

When the user clicks on “Buy Now”, they are taken to the purchase page, where they can fill in their address details and choose their payment option, all in a single page.

After placing an order, the user gets to see their “My Account” dashboard. This gives users complete information about their profile, orders, subscriptions, payment methods, and other account details.

Additionally, the website manager (aka the website administrator ) also has a similar admin dashboard from where they can see (and manage) all the orders placed by customers:

Implementation: Enabling Payments

A primary reason for selecting the GoDaddy tech stack was their newly released GoDaddy payments which is more cost-effective than the alternatives such as Stripe or Braintree. 

To enable GoDaddy payments, we downloaded their plugin from the marketplace:

We then set up a merchant account for our client with GoDaddy payments : 

In the Woocommerce payments setup screens, we configured GoDaddy payments to accept various credit cards:

When the setup is completed and the orders start flowing in, GoDaddy payments provide a very helpful dashboard to manage your payments:

Implementation: Enabling Subscription Billing

As you would have seen in the earlier section, the Woocommerce + GoDaddy payments infrastructure can generate orders and bill credit cards. However, they DO NOT have the ability to do subscription billing ie. bill regularly on a monthly basis. 

This functionality is enabled by the YITH Subscription plugin that works in tandem with Woocommerce and GoDaddy payments to bill regularly on a monthly basis : 

Implementation: News Alerts Management

Finally, we had to custom build the ability to send out email + text notifications to subscribed users whenever a new stock tip is posted on the site. The main components we used for this custom build were : 

• WordPress Posts functionality for creating stock tips

• A notifications plugin to generate custom email alerts specific to different categories of posts (Crypto, Options, SPACs, etc)

• A text plugin “WPSMS by Twilio” to send out SMS notifications

With the notification system setup and automated. The Bullswatchlist website is all set to launch and ready for business.

We, at Exemplifi, specialize in enterprise website development and management. Our in-house team of CMS veterans has been building enterprise solutions for the biggest global brands with timely delivery and awesome customer satisfaction.  If you’re looking for a CMS specialist to build, maintain or upgrade your website, you can reach out to us via the following LINK.