The Verge will roll out a hard registration wall to a cohort of readers later this month, reports Sara Guaglione of Digiday.
Guaglione reports, “Esther Cohen, director of audience and subscriptions at The Verge, told Digiday she wants to learn how to turn visitors in ‘lower converting but high traffic sources’ into ‘engaged and known members of our audience.’
“The publisher is weighing different approaches, such as requiring registration from a percentage of site visitors or from visitors arriving from specific referral sources or channels, Cohen said. If they don’t register and create an account on The Verge, they won’t be able to access the site.
“‘The idea is to bring those folks who aren’t ready to subscribe – whether it’s because the source they’re coming from, whether it’s because [of] the type of story they’re clicking on – to bring them into the fold a little bit further down the funnel… and then be able to give them tastes of what they could get by just engaging with us,’ Cohen said.
“Cohen said she wasn’t worried about creating friction that might turn away some readers. ‘Even if there’s a loss of volume, there’s hopefully a growth of quality,’ she said.”
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