Registration walls get buzzy

Registration walls have gotten a fair amount of ink lately. Registration walls prompt users to register and provide an email before accessing content.

In an August earnings call, New York Times Company president and CEO Mark Thompson talked about his company’s experiment with the walls. In July, NYT launched more extensive testing of registration and log-in and is prepared to play the long game to see gains. “The tests play out differently on different platforms, and we plan to experiment with a range of parameters and business rules — how many free articles a given user is able to read, for example, in return for registration — over the coming months. We don’t expect this testing to have a dramatic near-term effect on net subscription additions. Over time, however, we believe that the growing numbers of registered and logged in users of The Times will help us maintain or increase our momentum inbuilding out our subscription base.

“When a user is registered and logged-in, we can communicate with them and understand their preferences and patterns of consumption more effectively than if they are anonymous.That typically leads to higher engagement and subscription conversion,” Thompson said.

Hearst, the Chicago Tribune and Forbes have recently tried registration walls or planned to, according to a story from Digiday.

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