Using the Novum customer portal theme

Novum is a customer portal theme available to all merchants, which is built to supercharge your business through churn reduction and improve the experience of your customers on any device. This guide provides an overview of the Novum customer portal theme.

Before you start

• Novum is the first customer portal theme alongside Prima. Refer to Using the Prima customer portal theme for more information about using the Prima theme.
• The customer portal themes require custom CSS code to match the font, color, and style of your ecommerce theme. Custom CSS is not supported by Recharge Support as per our design policy. If you require further assistance, please visit the Recharge Agency Partner Directory.
  
• Refer to Customizing the Novum customer portal theme for common questions and customizations. 

Novum theme highlights

The Novum theme is specifically designed for subscription businesses and includes small details from shifting the “Cancel” button to proven retention-building tactics such as skip and swap options.  Edit these settings by following Customer portal controls.

Order Now button

Customers can select the Order now button in their customer portal to request their subscription product immediately. When selected, Recharge updates the charge date and processes the customer's next upcoming order right away.

The queued charge that is created after this order uses the same order frequency as is set on the subscription. For example, if the subscription is scheduled every two months and the customer clicks Order now on November 4th, the next queued order will be generated for January 4th. 

One-time products

Boost average order value by presenting customers with upsell opportunities within the customer portal. Customers can add one-time purchases to their upcoming subscription orders.

Add-on products with Try Something New

The Novum theme helps to easily upsell products on upcoming subscription orders with the "Try something new" feature. Try something new showcases your one-time products and subscriptions as add-ons directly to your customers from their customer portal. Change the default “Try something new” text from the Translations settings in your merchant portal.

There are three options for the types of products available in the Try something new section:

• All products - This option allows the customer to add every product you have available on your ecommerce store, regardless of if the item is a subscription product. If the product is only available on the ecommerce platform, the customer will only be able to purchase it as a one-time add-on item.
• Recharge products - Your customer portal will offer subscription products that are attached to Recharge subscription rules.
• Recharge collections - Your customer portal will offer a specific selection of products that have been created as a Recharge collection.

Mobile-first design

The Novum theme was built with a mobile-first approach. Your customers have a smooth experience on any device they access the portal on.

Delivery schedule tab

Novum includes a Delivery schedule tab in the customer portal that breaks down future subscriptions and one-time products based on the day they are set to charge. Customers see a breakdown based on the day of charge and shipping address for easy access.

Preview the Novum theme

Preview the current Novum theme to see what it will look like on your customer portal without making any changes to your live store. You must have at least one customer with an order in order to preview the theme.

1. Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Customer Portal.
2. In the Themes section, click Preview theme under Novum.
3. Use the preview URL to confirm what theme you are using. preview_standard_theme= should equal 2 when previewing Novum.

Enable the Novum theme

After you preview the Novum theme, you can enable it for your store on the same page. 

1. Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Customer Portal.
2. Under Themes, select the radio button next to Novum. 
3. Scroll to the bottom and click Save.

Access the Novum theme in the Recharge Theme Engine 

If you are a Recharge Pro merchant with the Recharge Theme Engine, you can access the Novum theme files directly in the Theme Editor. 

1. Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Theme editor.
2. Click Create new theme.
3. If your store uses Single Payment Methods, you will be asked what kind of customer payment methods this theme should support. Choose from Single payment method per customer or Allow customers to have multiple payment methods. This will convert your Single Payment Method store to Multiple Payment Methods.
4. Name your theme and select Novum.
5. Click Create Theme to generate a new theme based on the current theme version.
6. Click Edit code if you want to edit the code.
7. Click the three dots and select Publish when you are ready to publish the theme. 

The Theme Engine must be enabled in your customer portal settings for the Novum theme to correctly display for your customers.

1. Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Customer Portal.
2. In the Customer portal section, select PRO Theme Engine. 
3. Scroll to the bottom and click Save.

Customer portal location

Merchants using the Shopify Checkout Integration or the Recharge Checkout on Shopify can choose between two options for where the customer portal will be hosted:

• Hosted by Recharge - The customer portal is hosted by Recharge and will not inherit any styling or style changes from your store theme.
• Embedded in platform storefront - The customer portal is embedded within your Shopify theme and takes on the styling, logo, and menu from your Shopify theme. 
  • • If you're experiencing errors with the Embedded in platform storefront option and you have custom code in your Shopify theme, this competing code may be causing issues. We recommend checking your Shopify CSS to fix this issue. 

Hosted customer portal URL

Updating the portal from embedded to hosted will cause the portal URL to change, and rechargeapps.com will be included in the URL. Merchants on the Recharge Pro Plan using the Hosted by Recharge option, can follow our guide for Setting up a custom customer portal domain, if you want to customize this.

Adjust styling with the theme CSS

By default, the Novum theme is standard across all stores and will not match the color and styling of your store out-of-the-box. You can edit the theme's CSS styling manually to create a unified, seamless experience between your store and customer portal. See Customizing the Novum customer portal theme for more information.

1. Click Storefront in your merchant portal and select Customer Portal.
2. Add your custom code to Header HTML/CSS/JS, Footer HTML/CSS/JS, or Credit card page CSS in the Customize styles section.
3. Scroll to the bottom and click Save.

Adjust the theme translations 

Edit the theme translations to change the text labels that appear throughout the customer portal.

Troubleshooting

The "Manage subscriptions" link is going to the wrong customer portal

If you were using the legacy customer portal, the customer portal themes have a different URL. Any links you may have hardcoded into email notifications or your Shopify Liquid files that direct your customers to the portal and their subscriptions, will need to be updated with the Themes Portal URL. Update all reference links to /tools/recurring/login

Novum customer portal tour

Watch this video to see how your customers can interact with the Prima customer portal

FAQ

Refer to the Customer portal themes FAQ for common customer portal questions.