What is the Merchant Center?
Hike’s Merchant Center allows you to provide your customers with a branded checkout page for your SEO products, enabling your clients to sign up for your SEO products anytime, creating a seamless and professional experience for them.
You can also upsell Hike features as well as your own services, such as monthly support packages, additional keywords, and credits. Your clients will be able to order ad-hoc work directly in the platform - such as actions or content. You can decide which products they’d like to feature in the platform.
How it works?
The Merchant Center works by connecting your Stripe account with Hike and using this to create a custom checkout page, allowing you to automate your clients’ payments. Clients will be able to sign up with either a DIY SEO package, giving them access to your white-labelled platform or alternatively with a support product.
You can structure your support product however you’d like, so your team can fulfil it according to your business model. You can also offer your clients a 14-day money-back guarantee. If your client cancels in the first 14 days, they will receive a full refund minus a £5/$6 admin fee.
There are plenty of add-on options available for you to include within your platform. Some of these will need to be fulfilled by your team, and others will automatically update in the client's account.
Automatic Fulfillment Add-ons
- Content Wizard Credits - Clients can either add 15 additional credits per month or for as higher fee, unlimited credits.
- Additional Google Business Profile Location - Clients will be able to manage an additional Google Business Profile in their account.
- Additional Keywords - Clients will be able to add an additional 50 keywords to their website.
- Competition Credits - Clients can add additional competitor credits.
Manual Fulfillment Add-ons
- Action Orders - Clients can order action fulfillment directly from you.
- Content Orders - Clients can on-site order content to be completed by you and your team.
- Citation Orders - Clients can put in an order for you to build citations for their website.
Overview
Ready to get started with the merchant centre? Here’s a step by step guide on how to set this up. Please note, if you’ve already set up your custom domain and custom email, you can skip the first two steps.
Step 1: Setting Up the Custom Domain
The first step is to set up a custom domain name. Under the "Custom Domain" tab, enter your custom domain name without including "https". Once submitted, our development team will manually push the custom domain live, which takes one working day to validate.
Step 2: Setting Up Custom Email
Under the "Custom Email" tab, enter your custom email address and validate it. If you plan to use the Merchant Center, submit a custom email address that does not include "Hike" in it. This ensures that no emails with "Hike" in them go out to your customers.
Step 3: Create a Stripe Account
Setting up a Stripe account is mandatory to use for the Merchant Center. Click on the Stripe account setup link and follow the instructions on the Stripe website to create or link your Stripe account.
Step 4: Setting Up Taxes
Setting up taxes is optional and depends on whether you must apply tax to purchases. In the platform, you can set up tax rate percentages and which countries this tax rate applies to. Once set up, the platform automatically applies the tax rate to purchases.
Step 5: Setting Up Pricing
You can set up a platform-only and/or a platform-plus monthly support product priced in USD and GBP. You can choose monthly, yearly, or both options. The minimum monthly and yearly prices are determined by the cost of Stripe and the minimum cost of Hike plus VAT. This price will be shown to customers.
Step 6: Creating Add-Ons
You can add the content wizard, additional locations, actions, content, citations, competition credits, and 50 keyword blocks to your plan. Each add-on has its own minimum pricing.
Step 7: Setting Up the Checkout Page
You can customize your checkout page by adding your logo and page heading. Preview how it will look before continuing, and the platform will generate two checkouts for you to use - the software and the support package.
By following these seven simple steps, you can create a customised white-label SEO service for your clients. If you encounter any issues, our support team can always help you through the setup process.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I edit my customer’s user permissions?
No, you aren’t able to edit a customer’s user permissions in the Merchant Center. As the merchant account isn’t directly managed by you, you won’t be able to manage permissions of what areas of the platform your merchant customers can see.
How do I cancel a merchant website?
Currently, there is no way for a merchant to cancel their customers' website. In the event you need to cancel this, please reach out to our live chat support and we will be happy to help!
What happens if I cancel White Label Plus?
If you need to cancel White Label Plus, you must remove all your Merchant Center customers from the platform before cancelling. Once that’s done, you can downgrade to White Label.
How does Merchant Center payment and billing work?
Merchant Center payments are processed through Stripe. For each product your clients purchase from you, there is a set minimum price. This is based on two fees, the Hike cost, which includes the cost of the individual product, and Stripe fees. So for instance, if the minimum price for a product was £43.50, and you were to charge £60.00 for it, you would receive £16.50 each time that product is purchased or renewed.
What products can I upsell and how should I price them?
Each add-on in the Merchant Center has a minimum price
- Content Wizard Credits
- Additional Google Business Profile Location
- Additional Keywords
- Competition Credits
- Action Orders
- Content Orders
- Citation Orders