One other aspect of our sales process that's getting revamped as part of our e-commerce plugins is renewals. Just about everything we sell can be renewed in some respect. For example, if you pay monthly for hosting you'll need to "renew" each month. Likewise, if you have a Confluence license, you can optionally renew the license to extend your maintenance and support contract for another 12 months.
Our renewals process goes somewhat further than most recurring billing systems. After all, it has to deal with a lot more than the average online shop.
Firstly, there are different levels of renewal - you might start on a monthly hosting schedule but at a later date decide to move to a quarterly or annual schedule to get the 10% or 20% discounts they offer.
Likewise, with Confluence licenses, you might chose not to renew your license - after all, the license is perpetual so you can use the product indefinately. However, you may also decide that you want another 12 months of maintenance (support and upgrades) or you may decide to upgrade your license to get more user accounts (which also extends your maintenance contract).
With static online shops, such scenarios are somewhat complex to convey to customers - you generally need to show all the options (as we currently do) and then try and explain them with lots of text on-screen. Not nice.
With a more dynamic system we'll be able to present specific options that relate to your previous purchases. We'll be able to automatically notify you when a renewal is due, and provide a concise set of applicable options that's easy to understand.
So, for a Confluence "Team" license renewal you'd see options like:
- Don't renew (allow the maintenance and support contract to expire)
- Extend maintenance contract (upgrades and support) for another 12 months
- Upgrade to Confluence Workgroup license (includes 12 months maintenance)
- Upgrade to Confluence Enterprise license .... etc.
And for hosting you might see:
- Terminate hosting
- Pay for another months' hosting
- Pay for 3 months hosting and get 10% discount
- Pay for 12 months hosting and get 20% discount
- Upgrade to Gold band hosting .... etc.
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