A More Friendly Registration Demand

A e-media tidbit from Poynter Online.

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Posted by Steve Outing

A More Friendly Registration Demand

I’ve been a critic of news-website registration schemes that are too intrusive. I dislike clicking to request a news story (either from a news site’s home page or a referral link somewhere else) on a site I haven’t visited before and seeing a registration demand instead of the content I want. Besides being annoying, I contend that it turns many people away from a site, because they won’t bother registering. (That’s often my behavior.)

There’s a better way, and it’s demonstrated by SignOnSanDiego.com, website of the San Diego Union-Tribune. When an unregistered site visitor first hits an article on that site, a registration request is shown on top of the article, typically obscuring the headline but not the entire story. You can 1) fill out the 5-item questionnaire to make the box go away and never come back, 2) click “Ask me later,” or 3) just scroll down and read the article.

Here’s an example; you’ll see the registration box only if you haven’t previously registered with the site, or you’ve cleared your browser’s cookies since your last visit.

That’s great. Since the box will keep appearing for regular users of the site, it’s a de facto demand for registration. But for those one-time visitors who don’t want to bother registering, they still get to see the content they came for. Bravo.