Immediately after activating the plugin, you’ll see a prompt to complete the Constellation onboarding wizard. This wizard will help you configure basic settings and create your first membership plan.
The onboarding will adjust the out-of-the-box settings based on common use cases. Don’t worry if your type of business isn’t perfectly represented by the list! You can adjust selections throughout onboarding to best suit your site, and can edit them later.
You can also skip onboarding and set up your plans manually, though onboarding to your shiny new WooCommerce membership plugin should only take ~5 minutes.
Onboarding > Settings
Business model: choosing a business model will adjust the suggested settings, based on what we know about sellers like you!
- A Purchasing club is any business that provides special access to products or discounts for members.
- A Publisher is any business that sells access to content, such as a newspaper or a magazine.
- Online learning businesses provide access to courses or other educational content.
- Association or community is intended to represent any group or organization that maintains a member roster or directory.
- Event seller or ticketing is for any organization that sells access to events.
- Other is for everyone else.
Restricted content
Adjust what happens when a non-member visits a protected product or piece of content.
Onboarding > Gaining access
Create a plan: Name your first membership plan! The name will be shown to your members in emails from your store, and in the WooCommerce My Account area.
Granting access: Decide how someone can become a member of this plan (you can decide this for every plan!). Plans are most commonly provided to customers as part of a product purchase, but there are a number of ways to assign a plan depending on your goals.
- From a one-time product purchase: Customers become a member of this plan when they buy a designated product in your store.
- From recurring billing: Customers become a member of the plan once they purchase a recurring billing product.
- Note: this automatically sets your Membership length to “For as long as recurring billing is active”.
- They register an account: Anyone who registers for a new account will become a member of this plan.
- I assign them manually: Customers can only get access to this plan if you (or a store employee) create a membership in the admin area.
If you have not set up any products prior to configuring Constellation, you might be prompted to create one in a new tab. You can setup the product and close the new tab! The onboarding product search will immediately recognize your new product.
Membership length: You can also determine how long someone is a member once they’ve gained access.
- The membership never ends: The member will have access to this plan’s perks indefinitely. You can manually edit or delete individual membership records, but most users will remain members permanently.
- Tip: this type of membership is often used for incentivizing users to register an account!
- For a fixed amount of time: All members gain access to the plan between two specific dates.
- Tip: These type of plans are frequently used for events, courses, or for specific seasonal or promotional offers.
- For a specific period: All members have access for the same duration after their start date. This is most commonly used when offering annual membership plans.
- For as long as recurring billing is active: Members keep their membership (and perks!) so long as their subscription is active — if they cancel, the membership will end at the end of their pre-paid period.
- Tip: This setup is great for digital perks, like access to your articles, so members lose access when they stop paying.
Onboarding > Perks
Let’s set up the benefits for you members!
All perks are optional. You can offer discounts to members, or provide access to content or products. (Or both!)
Restricting content: You can protect all of your content so only members can see it, or you can choose specific content to protect.
Restricting products: Product restrictions work like content restrictions. However, you can choose the action that is restricted: seeing products, or just buying them. You might want to use your member-only products as a teaser or incentive to sign up!
- Restrict purchasing: Every visitor will see protected products in your shop, and can view the product listing. When viewing a listing, non-members will see a message informing them they need to purchase a membership in order to buy the product. (With a link to what they need to buy to help them!)
- Hide products: Protected products are completely hidden from your shop (and search results) until a member logs in. This is useful if you don’t want non-members to get a teaser of member perks.
Offering discounts: Member discounts can be offered on all products, specific categories, or individual products. You can decide whether to give members a percentage or flat amount off the list price.
Onboarding > Emails
Constellation adds three emails to your WooCommerce store.
Ending soon: When a membership has an expiry date, the ending soon email will encourage members to manually renew. (Active subscribers will not get this email.) You can edit the content of this email for each one of your plans individually.
Expired: This email will notify members when their membership ends. It’s a great way to remind them of the perks they just lost, to get them to manually reactivate!
Renewal reminder: Consider this a “win back” email — it’s a follow up after a membership ends, and you can provide an opportunity to sign back up after the membership expires.
When you click Save and Finish, your plan will be saved you can start selling!