What If Online Registration Is Voluntary?
from the makes-more-sense... dept
Plenty of people have been talking about just how silly it is for so many newspapers to force registration on users, seeing how it cuts down on the market size to which the paper can sell to advertisers, and drives users to other sites instead, since they don't want to go through the hurdle. It looks like at least one newspaper is looking for a much more reasonable middle-ground. They're asking for voluntary registrations. Basically, you can see the article just fine without registering. They just ask for registration info at the top of the page. You can even make that box go away, if you want. This way, they still get those people just passing-by who would never register, and when people do register, it's likely to be good, targeted data, rather than useless, dirty data.
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forced registration to read news articles
Even when I do take the time to register, I get nailed w/it again the next time I clean my cookies or use a different computer. What a joke!
If it were me and I wanted to collect info, I'd cut right to the artcle of interest, but put a banner ad asking people to sign up for the weekly HTML newsletter. This way I could get them hooked and prove my readership.
Eventually, I'd offer them a susciption, deluxe version of the 'news'.
Honey's always better than salt. And there is more than one 'freebie' give away to attract people to leave their "real" contact info.
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Really Nice Step ... but
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