Smart Checkout Guide: Upgrade and Downgrade

Modified on Tue, 6 Feb at 12:01 PM

This article is the fourth one from the Smart Checkout guide, covering the basics of the ClickFunnels Smart Checkout element. The Smart Checkout element allows you to sell products directly from your funnel.

This article will review the Upgrade and Downgrade features of the Smart Checkout element. One of the most recent features of our Checkout element is the ability to upgrade or downgrade a recurrent subscription.

Customers can return to the same checkout page and select a different plan if the Upgrade and Downgrade feature is enabled.

Important Note: The Upgrade/Downgrade feature only works with subscription prices. It means customers can only upgrade or downgrade a subscription plan.

Important information:

When upgrading/downgrading to a price with a setup fee, the setup fee is not charged.
When upgrading/downgrading to a price with a trial fee, the trial fee is not charged.
When upgrading/downgrading to a price with a trial period:
- If the old price had a trial period, the remaining trial period from the old price is still a trial period on the new price.
- The old price has no trial period; the trial is skipped
When upgrading/downgrading from a price with a trial to a price without a trial, the trial is immediately ended.

Feature Information:
The Upgrade and Downgrade feature is an excellent tool for allowing your customers to change their subscription plan anytime.
By adding variants to a particular subscription product, you can create price tiers for your customers to upgrade or downgrade. The following section will show you how to set your products properly for upgrade and downgrade.
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How to Set Up Products for Upgrade/Downgrade:
1. First, we need to set up our products the right way. From the ClickFunnels main menu, click under Products.
2. Click under Create Product to open the new product dialog.
3. Select your product's Type, Name, and Description, depending on your specifications, and click under Create Product. For this example, we will set up a Digital product named Subscription Plan 1:
4. Clicking under Create Product will open a new dialog. Please select Subscription as the Price Type and set the appropriate price for your product; once you are finished, click on Set Price. We gave our main product a 5 USD price:
5. Now, scroll down to the Variants section and check the “This product has multiple options, like different sizes or colors” box. Assign the appropriate values for your product and click under Done. For our example, we will use three different subscription levels: Low, for 1 USD; Regular, at 5 USD; and High, for 10 USD. And this is how it would look like:
6. Scroll down to the bottom and click under Update Product. It will save the current changes and reload the Product Settings page.
7. Back at the settings page, scroll down to the Variants section again; this time, you will see the recently created variants. Click under Edit Variants.
8. This step might differ depending on how many variants you have added. Since we’ve added three variants, we’ll start from Low to High. We recommend you click under the lowest price or the first one from the list.
9. Scroll down to the Pricing section and click under Add override price to add a new price for this particular option. You must do this for every Variant with a different price than your regular plan.
10. Select the Subscription type option, price, and recurrence, and click under Save.
11. Repeat the price override process for every variant that doesn’t come at your regular price. For example, since “Regular” is our normal price at 5 USD, we will only set an override price for our Low and High variants.
12. The next step would be setting Upgrade and Downgrade options for each variant. Inside the variant settings, scroll down to the Upgrades/downgrades section and click under “Add upgrade/downgrade.”
13. Select Upgrade or Downgrade accordingly. For this example, let’s set up our “Low” plan. Since this is the lowest of our offers, it can only be upgraded. So we will create an Upgrade for it. We will select Upgrade as the primary option, Upgrade from Low, and Upgrade to Regular, and select the Regular 5 USD price, then click under Save.
14. Continue creating Upgrade or Downgrade entries depending on your current plans or variants.
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Set Up a Funnel for Upgrade/Downgrade:
Once we have prepared our products, we must set them up from the funnel step settings.
1. From the main menu, click under Funnels.
2. Select the proper funnel from your funnel list by clicking on its title.
3. Click under the three dots button from the Step you have your Smart Checkout added to, and select Add Products (or Manage Products if you already have other Products added to this step).
4. Click under Add Product.
5. Hover over the right product and click on Select Product.
6. Click under your Product’s settings wheel icon.
7. Please check the “Allow contacts to upgrade/downgrade existing orders?” boxes.
8. Click under Availability and Prices to make sure all your prices are checked.
9. Click under “Updated included product”.
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How to Test:
Now that we have finished the Upgrade and Downgrade setup, we can test it to ensure everything works as it should.
1. Locate the top-right menu inside and confirm your funnel is in Test Mode.
2. If your funnel is marked as Live instead, you must change it back to Test Mode before testing. To do this, click under Settings, locate the “Test Mode?” toggle button, and change it to Yes.
3. Once we have made sure our funnel is in Test Mode, let's try to do a test run. Inside the funnel steps page, locate the funnel URL at the top center and click on the arrow icon next to it to open your funnel in a new tab.
4. Navigate through your funnel pages until you reach the checkout form and try to purchase using a testing email. Remember to save this email address and use an email address you have access to, because we will use it again to identify ourselves as a recurring customer.
5. Under Select Product, pick the plan you would like to test. For our example, we will select our Regular plan at 5 USD/m:
6. If we enable Test Mode, you will see the Test Mode credit card information at the top of your page. We will use this credit card number in our checkout form, including any 3-digit combination for the CVV and any future date for the expiry date:
7. This should take us to the Confirmation page. In our funnel, we have set up a Confirmation page with a simple receipt:
8. Now that we have completed the purchase of a Subscription plan through your checkout page, we will do a second run to test the Upgrade/Downgrade capabilities. Go back to your Funnel page and open your funnel in a new tab again:
9. If you type in an email with a recent purchase, the Smart Checkout element will recognize you as a recurrent buyer and send you a code to the phone or email you included.
10. We selected the option to receive the code through an email address, and this is how it looks like:
11. As soon as you type in the secure code, you will now see your current plan and the option to upgrade or downgrade to a price variation:
12. Click under the Submit button, which will automatically change your subscription for this test. Remember to change your funnel to Live once you are ready to start receiving traffic.
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Next Article:
Smart Checkout Guide: Shipping (coming soon)
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