I have a confession to make: I have two fat cats.

No, no, no. I’m not fat catting it, I HAVE two fat cats.

We all know what happens when we have fat pets. They live short, fat pet lives. This makes me sad. So, when Mike and Tony left their first annual vet appointment with a suggestion from the vet that we, uh, try to exercise them or something, I was determined to change, er, lower, my pets’ BMIs.

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First, have you ever tried to “exercise” cats?!? You must realize this is like eating soup with a fork. It’s a truly futile endeavor. I would toss a cat toy from one end of the room to the other, while Mike (pictured on the left) and Tony (pictured laying down) looked languidly on.

Quick to change course and not ready to give up, I switched tactics. Diet was next. Mike and Tony had never been so unhappy — or hungry — as when a vet friend of mine told me about a special diet food that was like Atkins for cats.

“It’s very low carb,” she said. “This is bullshit,” was Mike and Tony’s response.

“No, this is the plan,” I said, and promptly got the requisite prescription from my vet and went to an online pet store called Chewy.com. First, I wasn’t happy about needing a Rx. This is low-carb cat food we’re talking about here, not a controlled substance for Pete’s sake. Second, I live in an apartment, and anything I bring into said apartment has to be carried several blocks by yours truly, nearly always in a downpour. Therefore, I went online so the lovely USPS could do the heavy lifting for me.

As I was checking out online, I saw the prompt that I could sign up for a recurring autoship — a subscription service, in common e-commerce parlance. “How awesome,” I said. No more forgetting or having to remember. Yes, I would take Chewy.com up on its offer.

Now, I’ve been in e-commerce since January 2006, back when Nintendo introduced the first Wii, bird flu spread and Google (in its infinite wisdom) purchased YouTube for $1.65B in stock. So, I’m always game to test out the latest e-commerce tricks of the trade myself.

My experience surprised me:

  • The default frequency is important — too early and the customer may take years to order again, too late and the convenience of a subscription model flies out the window.
  • Just as important as your default frequency is the ability to change the frequency or “delay” shipment. This should be as easy as finding a customer service phone number on your site (… right?).
  • There’s this little thing called impulse upsell that’s amazingly effective for maximizing average order value for your brand and convenience for your customer. Impulse upsell is what it sounds like: customers have the ability to very easily and impulsively add items to their autoship.

You might say, who cares?

I care that I can add a cat toy or extra catnip to my existing subscription and save on shipping. On some items Chewy.com even gives me a small discount. Chewy.com cares that I’ve not only increased my basket size, but also done more of my shopping with it than I might otherwise. And it’s all because of this subscription service feature.

So how do I put all of my cat food subscription knowledge to use? I sell cosmetics online, so I have a foundation subscription as part of my business. We’re working to make it easier to change or delay shipment, to “impulse upsell,” and are looking at cancel reasons to see if we should shorten the default frequency of shipment.

All of this makes our customers’ lives more awesome, and delivers on the convenience proposition. And hopefully, these customers will do more of their shopping on my site because of it.

As for Mike and Tony, they still have guts that swing when they run, but at least they’re happy mommy isn’t running out of their (low carb) kibble.

Amy Madonia is the executive director of digital for Temptu, a retailer of airbrush makeup systems. Amy owns the P&L, user experience, testing and site operations, as well as paid search, SEO, affiliate, email marketing and display channels for Temptu. Prior to Temptu, has held e-commerce positions for leading brands such as Nautica, New York & Company, Michael C. Fina, Wrangler and Hanes.