How Bramble Books doubled the subscribers who stay
Customers were not leaving because of the books. They wanted a month off, and could not find the button.
On this page
Bramble Books is an independent bookshop with a busy website and a monthly book subscription. Two years ago, the subscription was losing customers faster than it found them. With Tally, the owner found the reason in a funnel, fixed it in a weekend and doubled the number of people who stay past three months.
The problem
Owen Pryce opened Bramble Books in 2015. The subscription started in 2021: each month, a book chosen by the staff, wrapped in brown paper with a handwritten note. People loved it, and it grew fast. Then it stopped growing. New subscribers kept coming, but almost as many left each month.
"I thought the books were the problem," Owen says. "Maybe we were choosing the wrong ones. We spent months arguing about it."
What the data showed
Owen set up Tally in an afternoon and built two charts: a retention chart for subscribers by the month they joined, and a funnel of the steps people took before cancelling.
The retention chart showed a cliff after the second parcel. The funnel showed something more specific: most people who cancelled had first visited the page to skip a month, and had not found the option. The skip button was on a page reached from the account menu, then a second menu, then a link at the bottom.
They did not want to leave. They wanted a month off, and we only gave them the door.
Owen Pryce
The fix
Over one weekend, the Bramble team moved the skip option to the top of the subscription page and added it to the cancellation page as well: "Not ready to leave? Skip next month instead." They also added a "pause for three months" option for summer holidays.
The results
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Still subscribed after 3 months | 34% | 68% |
| Cancellations per month | 190 | 85 |
| Skipped months per month | 40 | 260 |
Many people now skip a month or two and come back. Those who skip at least once stay, on average, four months longer than those who never do.
What Owen tells other shop owners
"Look at what people try to do just before they leave. It is usually something reasonable that you made difficult." Bramble now checks the cancellation funnel every month, and the staff still argue about the books. "That part is fun," Owen says. "It was never the problem."
