Recurring subscriptions and other payments have become more prominent as the average consumer has begun to rely more upon their technology.  The convenience that a “set it and forget” option provides consumers, and the fact that these recurring payments can appeal more to them, makes these options a prominent method of obtaining revenue for many businesses.

The interesting thing about these payments is that there are a number of factors that your business must consider to ensure that your recurring sales continue to produce favorable results.

The most important factors are listed below:

1.  Gross Sales Metrics

Tracking the number of subscriptions that your company grosses each month is vital to ensuring that your subscriptions are growing or at least staying even in number. This helps you know when you need to adjust something with your recurring product or service to promote more purchases from consumers.

2.  Customer Opinions & Surveys

One standard fact of business is that your customers will be inclined to purchase more from you when they have a positive opinion of your company, your products and any other services provided by you.

Measuring your customers’ opinions is vital to ensuring that your recurring product has a positive growth.  This means you have to measure not only what they think of your business currently but also what your customers would like to see you implement.

Customers are Ignoring You by Ron, on Flickr.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

3.  Measuring Customer Loss

One of the most important statistics to any subscription or recurring service is called the attrition rate.  It measures the number of customers that leave your business over a period of time, and it can be an important indicator that you may need to change something about your products or services to prevent losing further customers.

As a general rule of thumb, you want to keep your rate as low as possible.  Lower attrition rates tend to accompany more successful companies.

While there are a number of things you can do to make your products perform better, one of the best ways to do so is to switch to a cloud-based service provider like Service Source for recurring services.  This can allow SaaS applications like the ones that run your business to measure the statistics most important to ensuring its success while providing you with reliable service that scales efficiently with your consumers.