Does the Star Tribune’s new Access Vikings Premium sound easy to you?
But in addition to the info, registrants have to accept the site’s e-mailed FYI Newsletter and FYI Offers. The offers can be customized, it looks like, but choosing from various categories. [By this point I would be pulling back.] Then they can pick from nearly two dozen e-mails; thoughtfully, three have been pre-checked—AM and PM Updates, Deals+Steals/Thrifty advice—meaning registrants have to uncheck them if they don’t the daily updates. Others range from zoned news to the Pet Central Newsletter. When I dug a little deeper, I found that I could delete the FYI Newsletter and FYI Offers but only from my member profile after registering.
That’s a requirement even if you sign up for a free account just to comment on content. Who comes up with these ideas? Staci Kramer at PaidContent puts it well:
Why does any of this matter? Day in, day out, we’re writing here about the ways news outlets are trying to get users to pay for content and registration is key in nearly every one. If it isn’t global, easy or transparent, the content had better be really good and the price better be right because the pool of people willing to complete the process—let along enter payment info—will get smaller and smaller along the way.
One of my biggest concerns with news paywalls is that I don’t trust news organizations — particularly newspapers — to make the process seamless and easy enough for consumers. It’s not enough to try to charge for something. We have to make the experience enjoyable.
Look at how bad most news Web sites are. Heck, look at how little thought most have put into their former cash cow classified advertising when it comes to the Web. What exactly have most news organizations done on the Web to inspire confidence that they could pull off a paywal?
I have grave, grave concerns that news organizations will spend too much time thinking about charging for news and content and not enough time thinking about how to make the user experience good.