We are offering a service that will be charged on a yearly basis but we will offer a 15 - 30 day trial period. However, for a faster and more convienent sign up process we only want to collect their email and password to start the service. Before their trial period runs out we would notify them that they need to fill in their billing info to continue the service.
Is this something that ARB would be able to handle; only accepting an email address to start the trial period and then updating the account with CC info later on? Alternatively would it make more sense to track the trial period on our own server and then start ARB (without a trial period) on the day their trial period ends according to our server?
Further more, I believe ARB is the way to go for what I am trying to accomplish. I feel like I've read a lot about implementing recuring payments using ARB and/or CIM and/or AIM combos but I am still a bit unsure about the best solution.
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09-28-2011 10:06 AM
Usually in these sorts of things you collect credit card info up front, but say that if they cancel before the trial period runs out then they won't be charged. A lot of people are lazy and don't bother to cancel. So my suggestion would be to use CIM rather than ARB, collect their credit card and billing info up front and create a billing profile. You won't actually set up any charges until the billing period is over, however - you'll have some automated routine that runs every morning to check who has a trial that's run out and hasn't been charged yet and then process a charge against their billing profile. If the charge doesn't go through, you notify them that they need to update their credit card info. If your conversion rate is fairly high and the rate of credit card failure the first time is also high enough to warrant it, you can use something callled validation mode to verify their credit card before you run the first charge - validation mode essentially charges them 1 cent and then immediately voids it, meaning you get charged a transaction fee but can tell up front whether their credit card is fake or not.
Alternately, I suppose the free trial and the full subscription could be unrelated - you could just hand out the free trial and then if they haven't signed up for a full subscription (again, I'd recommend CIM for ease of use) you can mail them automatically every week or two from then on until they either sign up or tell you to shut up. This is also fairly effective if you know how to write good marketing emails.
09-28-2011 02:12 PM
Usually in these sorts of things you collect credit card info up front, but say that if they cancel before the trial period runs out then they won't be charged. A lot of people are lazy and don't bother to cancel. So my suggestion would be to use CIM rather than ARB, collect their credit card and billing info up front and create a billing profile. You won't actually set up any charges until the billing period is over, however - you'll have some automated routine that runs every morning to check who has a trial that's run out and hasn't been charged yet and then process a charge against their billing profile. If the charge doesn't go through, you notify them that they need to update their credit card info. If your conversion rate is fairly high and the rate of credit card failure the first time is also high enough to warrant it, you can use something callled validation mode to verify their credit card before you run the first charge - validation mode essentially charges them 1 cent and then immediately voids it, meaning you get charged a transaction fee but can tell up front whether their credit card is fake or not.
Alternately, I suppose the free trial and the full subscription could be unrelated - you could just hand out the free trial and then if they haven't signed up for a full subscription (again, I'd recommend CIM for ease of use) you can mail them automatically every week or two from then on until they either sign up or tell you to shut up. This is also fairly effective if you know how to write good marketing emails.
09-28-2011 02:12 PM
Thanks for your advice! Yes, we have thought about trying out paying up front but we'd also like to try letting them pay when they feel like it just to see how it affects our conversion rate. Each method should have its own benefits and disadvantages.
This is my third day of immersing myself into the idea of payment gateways. I just created a working sample using AIM yesterday which sends an AUTH_ONLY type when the form is completed and verified. Following the submission it would start the ARB subscription for the following year. I haven't stepped into any ARB code yet.
It seems like most users in this form lean towards using CIM over ARB so I will look more into CIM today. From what I understand CIM can handle everything that AIM and ARB can do. I haven't seen a working sample of CIM yet but the documentation says that the user creates and can save their billing info to Authorize.net in a pop-up or iFrame. I just have two quick questions about this:
1. I read the documentation about CIM a few times and it mentions that a user has to create an Authorize.net account to submit and save their payment info. The language isn't very clear. Does this mean they have to signup for Authorize within the iFrame after signing up on our site? Or does this happen automatically (our site sends an ID parameter to identify clients).
2. Is the content within the iFrame customizable (CSS, required fields, etc.)?
09-29-2011 12:15 PM
Nm my last message, I found that the hosted method is not the only option. The API version seems to be very customizable so far. Thanks again! I'll be sure to frequent the forum if I have further questions.
09-29-2011 03:01 PM
No problem. I started with AIM and ARB myself, but ARB is a bit of a pain to deal with when it comes to failed payments, so next time I'm using CIM.
09-30-2011 02:00 AM
Is anybody explain how ARB works , actually I have heard that authorize.net saves the Credit Card details after successful transaction and in response it gives the profile id, and I have to do the same things , so request you to please explain the process how it works.
Ganesh.
11-02-2011 10:30 PM
With ARB, Authorize.net stores the credit card info and bills the credit card automatically every specified timeperiod. You get a subscription ID back when you create the subscription, and you usually set up a callback (relay response) page as well so whenever a charge is generated you can record that too.
With CIM, you create a customer profile and billing profile, again with the credit card info stored by Authorize.net. The difference here is that you get profile ID's back rather than a subscription ID, and you tell Authorize.net when to generate a charge rather than having it done automatically. This gives you a lot more control, so you can program subscriptions with varying timeperiods, charges, etc. CIM is also in my opinion a lot less complicated to set up than AIM + ARB + callback page.
11-03-2011 03:24 AM