UK Newspaper The Times requires Free account, Traffic Drops by Half

Here at Crenk we have talked a lot about Newspapers, Rupert Murdoch and implementing paywalls. Here in the UK Ruper Murdoch plans to add a paywall to The Times. This will mean that customers will need to pay a fee to read the papers content.

At the moment The Times isnt charging for content, but that have implemented a registration process, which means anyone who wished to view an actual article register an account.

According to Hitwise’s numbers, simply adding the registration barrier has cut traffic to the site almost in half.

Hitwise also tracked where users were going once they hit the registration page. About a third stay on one of The Times’ properties, but many head straight to another news site (The Telegraph and The Guardian are big winners here), or simply to Google.

These numbers highlight the real impact of changing to a paid content environment. With so many options for news on the Web, and search engines that will happily present those options to a reader, even the convenience of accessing free news can have a major impact on online readership.