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Setting up surveys

This article explains how to create custom checkout funnels and flows for your Subbly products. In this article, you will learn how to create the the checkout funnel by using surveys and how to properly connect them to your product checkouts for the seamless user experience.

Use cases

Surveys can be used in various ways. Here are some of the key benefits:

  • Collect customer data to personalize their experience (especially important for curation-style subscriptions).
  • Allow customers to select the products they receive (ideal for build-a-box functionality).
  • Offer upsells and add-ons during the checkout flow.
For a more robust upselling tool at checkout, consider using funnels.

Generic vs Subscription Box template

There are two main templates you can use when building a survey. The key differences between them are:

  • The Generic Survey template displays all questions on a single page, whereas the Subscription Box Survey template follows a step-by-step (breadcrumb) layout, where each question appears on a separate step of the checkout funnel.
  • The types of questions available differ between the two templates. The Subscription Box template offers greater flexibility, allowing you to configure the flow to include a price plan selection step and/or an email collection step.
  • The Generic Survey can be set to trigger either before or after checkout, whereas the Subscription Box template can only appear before the actual product checkout.

You can find an example of the Generic Survey here. A demo of the Subscription Box Survey template in action is available here.

You can use the generic survey on any Subbly plan. Subscription Box Survey requires a one time activation fee of $499. You can activate it from My Plans section of the admin. If you need help setting up the survey or just want someone to build a demo of the survey for you, make sure to contact the support team through the chat widget.

Using Generic survey template

Make sure to check the Generic survey template in action here.

To set up a Generic Survey template on your Subbly account, go here and select Add New Survey. In the next step, enter a name for the survey (for internal use only—it will not appear on the checkout) and be sure to choose the Generic template.

There are two types of Generic Survey templates: pre-purchase and post-purchase. The key difference is when the survey is triggered—either before or after checkout.

An important consideration is that a survey can only be used post-purchase if it does not upsell or alter the subscription price in any way. In other words, a post-purchase survey can only be used to collect additional customer information or preferences, as long as it does not modify the recurring subscription price.

Types of questions

There are four types of questions you can use when building a survey:

  1. Text – Allows customers to input free text.
  1. Single Choice – Customers can select one option from multiple choices. The selected option can alter the total subscription price, depending on the setup.
  1. Multiple Choice – Customers can select more than one option, and their choices may impact the final price.
  2. Quantity Selector – Ideal for subscription boxes with menus or cases where customers can select multiple units of each option. Each unit can adjust the total price. For example, if an option costs $1 per unit and the customer selects three, $3 is added to their subscription total.

Question rules

Question rules apply to Multiple Choice and Quantity Selector question types, allowing you to set limits on customer selections. You can:

  • Define a minimum/maximum number of options a customer can select at a given step.
  • Set a minimum/maximum dollar value that the customer must meet when making their selections.
For example, if you're setting up a build-a-box survey where customers must select items worth at least $150 before proceeding to the next step, you can enforce this requirement using question rules. In this setup, the base subscription price can be set to $0, relying entirely on the customer’s selections to determine the final total at checkout. You can configure the survey step as shown in the image below.

Other notes and considerations

  • The same survey can be used with multiple products; however, a single product can have only one survey attached to it. This means you cannot assign both a pre-purchase and post-purchase survey to the same product.
  • You can easily rearrange the order of questions within a survey by dragging and dropping the survey options, as shown in the image below.
  • You can make the question required by enabling the corresponding toggle on each question of the survey. If the toggle is disabled, customers will be able to skip that question when on the checkout and the preference won't be collected from the customer.
  • Multiply price add-ons by number of shipments toggle applies to the entire survey. This setting determines whether price modifiers from the survey will be multiplied by the number of shipments within the billing period or charged only once.
Take the following example, you have created an incoherent type of product, the one that's being prepaid by the customer for 12 months (a year) in advance, but you're sending out 12 monthly shipments as a result of a yearly payment (customer pays today for 12 months in advance, and gets the product every month for 12 consecutive months). Now imagine that you've added the survey to this product that lets the customer choose whether he/she would want to include the $5 item to the base price of the product. Would you want this customer to be charged $5 only once for the yearly sum? Or do you want to multiply the $5 charge with 12 to match the number of shipments customer will receive in a year?
For additional implications on what happens when you delete/change survey responses or archive the survey completely please refer to the separate article here.

Using Subscription Box survey template

See an example of the Subscription Box survey template in action here.

To start building the Subscription Box survey template, go here and click on Add New Survey. On the following page, make sure to select the Subscription Box survey template.

Question types

Before you proceed, make sure to review the Question types and Question rules subsections in the Using Generic survey template above! Same applies to the Subscription Box Survey template as well.

Compared to the Generic Survey template, the Subscription Box Survey template includes three additional question types:

  • Plan Selection Step (Mandatory) – Allows customers to choose from different products or pricing plans of the same product. One-time products cannot be added here.

You can upload separate thumbnail images for each pricing plan directly from this step. Additionally, you can add a banner or footer to highlight the value of a specific step by configuring the Highlight column.

Once the products are added to the Plan Selection Step, be sure to configure the layout and appearance on the same screen. Choose from different display options and adjust how the text aligns relative to the height of the cards.

If you add only one product or pricing plan, this step will not be displayed to the customer at checkout. However, the plan selection step is mandatory—without it, the survey template will not function and will not lead to checkout.
  • Email Collection Step – Captures the customer’s email before checkout or before completing the survey. If the customer abandons checkout after this step, their email will still be saved in the cart abandonment pool, allowing for retargeting.
If the customer drops off from the checkout after submitting their email, email of the customer will both added to the Leads section of your Subbly admin. Make sure to setup Automations using the Lead Created trigger to send a follow up email to these emails. Similarly, if you have Klaviyo or Mailchimp connected, Subbly will send those emails in connected lists which will make it possible for you to build cart abandonment campaigns for emails that did abandon the cart.
  • Add-On Offer – Enables a single-product upsell on a separate page. Only one product can be added at a time.

When setting up the add-on offer, you can choose whether it should be added only to the customer's first order or automatically included in their recurring subscription.

For more advanced upselling options at checkout, consider using funnels.

Additional appearance options

You can set up the breadcrumb-style menu for the survey from the main page of the Subscription Box survey template, as shown in the picture below.

The survey automatically inherits the styling from the Storefront Settings, including the cart and checkout color palette. However, you can customize the survey template’s styling separately by disabling the toggle and making modifications manually.

Embed options

There are 3 different options how you can embed your newly created survey on your existing website:

Subbly-hosted page - This option provides a direct link to the survey (and consequently product checkout) and it bypasses the customer having to visit your site at all. This is ideal for social media sharing or for inclusion in email blasts where you can include this URL so customers can finish checking out after following the link from an email.

Add directly to your Subbly website - If you are hosting your website on Subbly at the same time, we made it super easy to embed your product survey to it. Simply use the Survey element to drag and drop it on anyone of your pages and you'll be good to go!

Embedded in your website - If your site is hosted elsewhere (and you're using Subbly only for the checkouts) this is the path you'll need to take. Click on this option and follow the 3-step instructions displayed on-screen.

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