ELLE and Poool have optimized ELLE’s paywall to increase conversions. It’s an interesting story that publishers should know.
ELLE’s paywall strategy came out of three strategic challenges.
- Diversify revenue
- Enlarge the audience
- Make them younger
I’m very interested in how they made people younger.
ELLE worked with Poool, which is a French startup that focuses on audience conversion strategies and gives publishers the tools to monetize their content.
Poool has found that half of a site’s visitors never see premium content, and therefore never see the paywall offer.
Note that this problem assumes a certain paywall model, so I’m going to take a minute and summarize the major types of paywalls.
A hard paywall restricts access to most or all of a website’s content.
With a metered paywall, users get some number of views before they get the subscription offer.
The freemium model offers a combination of free and premium content. Some articles or content are freely accessible to all users, while others are restricted to subscribers. That’s the type ELLE used.
A dynamic paywall uses a flexible approach to restrict access based on various factors. Smart publishers should power a dynamic paywall with AI, to figure out what those factors should be.
An article pass, or maybe a one-day ticket, allows users to pay for a particular article, or access the site for a very limited period of time. This is similar to pay-per-view.
A membership or subscription bundle might grant early access to content, ad-free browsing, or special community features and benefits.
Finally, there’s the hybrid model, which isn’t a model at all, but a collection of some of these other options.
ELLE’s challenge was to get more people to see the subscription offer, because they were using a freemium model, which means some people might never see the premium content, and therefore they wouldn’t see the paywall offer. They did this by promoting premium content – very visibly – with a call to action.
Another challenge is making sure people actually see the paywall offer once they get to the premium content. This is a question of balancing frustration and engagement. You want to engage the user enough to view the content, but then you frustrate them with the paywall offer.
ELLE’s editorial team works to ensure that the premium article is eye-catching and compelling.
They also found a few very interesting techniques for better conversion.
- Move the paywall up the webpage
- Change the paywall regularly – like its color
- Adapt the paywall to the user’s level of engagement, their location, and whether they’re on mobile or desktop
- Shrink the registration page form, and make sure it’s just one page
This is based on an article by Pierre de Villiers, “How ELLE is using a dynamic paywall and continuous optimization to increase subscriber conversion rates.” It was recently distributed by Bo Sacks.
This is another article that came out of the FIPP World Media Congress, which some rich sponsor needs to send me to next year.
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