Jay Small presents an interesting review of the results of a month-long test of changes to registration protocols at thirteen E.W. Scripps daily newspaper websites.

Says Jay: "With the test, we wanted to address concerns that the wall restricted site traffic growth too much, especially traffic coming from search engines. We softened the wall so that a user (client, technically) that was not logged in could view up to a set number of articles in a 30-day period before being intercepted by the registration form. We did not publicize the test in any way; site managers didn't even know which threshold they got... We tested a range of different thresholds on Scripps sites, from no change in current protocols all the way to completely open access, and including thresholds of three, four, five, six and seven 'free' article views per 30-day period."

Scripps was interested in finding out if softening the "wall" by allowing a certain number of page views impacted registration; if softening the wall reduced user abandonment once they encountered registration screens; and if opt-ins were effected by different registration thresholds. As Jay explains, managers are now determining just where to permanently set those "soft-wall" thresholds.

Continues Jay: "To preserve a balance between continued growth of our e-mail marketing programs and optimum customer experience, we corporate folks advised site managers to choose thresholds between three and five "free" article views per user per 30 days. The lower the number, the more people will encounter the wall, but the higher opt-in growth should be..."