Newspapers Experiment With Different Registration Systems

Studies

from the experiment-away dept

Jay Small, who works for E.W. Scripps, writes in to let us know about an experiment Scripps has been working on concerning registration walls for its various newspaper websites. In the past (as Jay notes), we’ve been quite critical of newspapers having registration walls — believing it keeps traffic away, lowering their ad revenue (to a much greater degree than any bogus demographic data they get from the registrations helps boost their ad revenue). The experiments involved letting people see a limited number of stories per month without registration. The number was different, depending on the site, so they could compare across different sites. The results aren’t too surprising — though, they might have been more interesting if the comparisons weren’t across sites, but for randomly chosen users within a single site (some get reg required right away, some get it after 3 stories, some after 5, etc.). They found it didn’t impact actual traffic that much (or did so in inconclusive ways), but that could be a factor of people knowing to avoid Scripps’ papers because they already knew about the registration wall. When people did eventually get the registration page, the same percentage bailed out. And, of course, the most expected finding: fewer people signed up for the email newsletters from Scripps’ papers because fewer people were pushed to do so on a registration page. This highlights the point we made a few years ago that registration for newspapers usually isn’t really about getting “better data,” but about building a bigger spam list. Either way, it’s good to see more newspapers experimenting with alternatives, and it will be interesting to see where Scripps goes with this.