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Head of Digital Experience at Royal Mail group
07 May 2009 09:46am
Does anyone have any research / experience on the impact of introducing a registration barrier? I suppose there are 2 elements that I am particularly interested in:
1) The impact on SEO - will Google spider content behind a barrier?
2) User reaction to having to register / log in for content that may be available elsewhere on the web?
CEO at Econsultancy
07 May 2009 12:34pm
Hi Caroline
The impact on SEO could well be severely negative. Google can't spider content behind a registration barrier so it is "invisible" to Google. Also, and equally as significant for direct, and indirect traffic (including SEO), is the fact that people don't tend to link to registration access content so your inbound links will fall away.
A common model, and what we do on this site, is to give away free information (like this Forum, our Blog etc.) to get the links and SEO benefits but then also have paid-access premium content on the site behind the barrier (as with a lot of our reports and guides).
On your second question - it depends a lot on how much the user wants the information, how easy it is to find elsewhere, how much of a hurry they're in to get it, how well you package it etc. For example, our best selling piece of content on this site is our Internet Statistics Compendium which is actually an aggregation of freely-available statistics on the web. However, the value is in the packaging. You can find it yourself if you can be bothered but it's not worth the time to do it yourself.
Director at Watson Hall Ltd
08 May 2009 13:25pm
Caroline
Some organisations try to allow search engines to index the content, but deny access to other un-registered users. This is fraught with dangers and is usually implemented very poorly, allowing clever (or not so clever) people direct access.
You may also want to consider the data quality issue. Registrations don't necessarily mean distinct real people. This article relates to registration at checkout:
http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button
but includes some useful numbers:
If you do implement the registration barrier, build in data-quality checks and subsequent processes for ongoing de-duping, tidying and junk removal.
Regards
Colin Watson
Technical Director
Watson Hall Ltd for website security
Head of Digital Experience at Royal Mail group
10 May 2009 07:44am
Thanks very much Colin and Ashley, this is really interesting.
Do you think that a model similar to the FT's, where readers are allowed to view, say, 5 articles a month would help?
CEO at Econsultancy
11 May 2009 09:40am
@Caroline
I think that FT model is a really interesting one. One of the few real innovations in publishling models recently which I talk about in my post "New metrics and business models for digital publishing - selling outcomes not inputs?".
(And I used to work for the FT).
However, despite all the positive press it has had, and the official line about its success, I don't really know whether commercially it has been as successful as they say. Maybe, maybe not. It does have challenges and needs to be implemented quite carefully but is certainly an interesting concept.
Director at Watson Hall Ltd
11 May 2009 12:50pm
Interestingly FT.com is suing a customer for alleged mis-use of user registrations for paid content. More details at:
http://www.clerkendweller.com/2009/2/24/Guessable-Usernames-and-Passwords
Regards
Colin Watson
Head of Digital Experience at Royal Mail group
11 May 2009 14:17pm
This is definitely an area that is hotting up as display ad revenues start to dwindle. I saw in horror (as a publisher) a jubilant post in Dubai's ‘Campaign’ magazine that a reader had found an ad pop-up blocker, that ‘stops all those nasty little ads’. I thought to myself, you may be gleeful now, but will it be the same when you are forced to pay for all your content and services?
I have also just been sent articles that ‘Guardian Media Group is considering charging for content in some specialist areas of Guardian.co.uk such as Media Guardian’ and ‘GMG is making "lots of money" out of sites such as Autotrader and Guardian Jobs.’ See http://www.paidcontent.co.uk/entry/419-fipp-advertisers-contemplate-digital-growth-print-declines/
And that ‘Micro-payments considered for WSJ website’ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/afcc5024-3d97-11de-a85e-00144feabdc0.html
I think the publishing model will change, however Ashley as you mention in your article "New metrics and business models for digital publishing - selling outcomes not inputs?", we should be innovative in our solutions. I don’t believe that slapping a log in box on the homepage of a site is the way forward. Users are not stupid and know how to use google. I am sure if the same content is available elsewhere they will go and find it.
However, if the site also offers content or products that are useful to the user (including packaging in a different way freely available content) and this is marketed well, then I think they will register for free. We just need to be very careful on how things are implemented (both from a usability and SEO perspective).