services is critical as is 8 October 2012 How to Implement a Paywall Page 3 of 7 ensuring subscribers

 services is critical as is 8 October 2012 How to Implement a Paywall Page 3 of 7 ensuring subscribers receive joined up services. Furthermore encouraging print subscribers to make the move to digital should play a fundamental part of a strategy if we are to believe that print is truly dying out. Offering informed bundling options and incentives at the outset can truly help to manage the transition and the potential fall-out from moving to walled content online. Typical requirements and how they can be delivered Once business objectives have been set, content and customers understood and a decision made to implement a paywall to monetise digital content delivery, you need to select what type of wall is going to work and where to build it. There are a number of different types of paywall in operation and the utilisation of which depends on the business and customer decisions made through the setting of the project objectives. The main types of paywall are: Hard paywalls Soft paywalls ‘Freemium’ orcombination paywalls Hard paywalls are a complete lock-down on content where no site access is permitted without payment. This is generally utilised by companies who are very confident in their market position and understand that their content has an inherent market value which consumers are happy to pay for. Whilst a hard paywall does offer a strong revenue delivery model, a business does need to be very sure that this level of access restriction will not deter potential readers from accessing their site. Soft paywalls on the other hand are generally based on a metered model whereby a consumer is able to access a limited amount of content which is predetermined usually on page numbers or time, before access is restricted by the paywall. This is the most common type of paywall integration and\

 works well because it allows for both casual readers to access limited content without any barriers to do so, whilst also driving revenues for more regular customers who are happy to pay for continued access. ‘Freemium’ or combination paywalls are a very good option for companies who have easily determined levels of content on offer. This is where a website is divided into sections where users are able to access a range of content areas for free, but premium services and areas are walled off for paid access. These types of paywall should deliver most projects’ requirements. Offering one-off content and events is also something which is increasingly popular as well as incentivised subscription-access where users are encouraged to build a level of brand loyalty through an incentivised introduction period. There is a great deal of flexibility on offer through paywall implementation and it does need to be assured that the project is easily expandable for future market conditions or diversification with minimal costs. Working with a payments specialist does help to ensure these considerations are met and productised. Other major considerations which need to be factored in include failure planning. Whereby if in the unlikely event the paywall goes down do you want to have the 8 October 2012 How to Implement a Paywall Page 4 of 7 paywall “fail open" so there are no restrictions on access, or “fail closed” so all access is restricted. The ability to manually open and close a paywall is also important, particularly in a news environment where national emergencies require limits to be lifted and the ease of that control should be an important factor to consider. Geography should also play an important factor. With different languages and currencies being utilised, a system which can handle these differences is vitally important for a global content provider. Being able to manage different access costs, access points, offers and incentives in different global regions, determined by marketing strategies, through a centralised system, really keeps a company in touch with their global customers. If you are to offer content across borders, managing the various tax rates which customers will encounter, both in purchase costing but also in back-office reporting, can be a very time consuming undertaking. Having a system which allows for this tax calculation to happen automatically can make a big difference in the operation of a system. Critically there does need to be a consideration also of organisational impact.

 How effectively will the reporting function peform both from a marketing and financial viewpoint? Is a system easy to understand, products easy to manage and offers, incentives and pricing easy to optimise for your customers? An effective system needs to work across an organisation, be easy to manage and provide evidence based management information. Existing processes don’t always map with a new implementation and therefore this too needs to be considered and mapped out to be as effectual as possible. Quite often an organisation, especially one as well established as a print publisher or a newspaper, can be very resistant of change and ensuring the buy in of all levels of stakeholders is fundamental to ensuring a smooth implementation. Technology and department considerations for a company Having established your project prerequisites and understood how your business objectives can be delivered, it is crucial to understand your current systems and what technology you are likely to require. Most major publishing companies are likely to have a web presence already in place, but how that is served up and stored could play a part in your system requirements and considerations. There needs to be a consideration at this stage about any and all of the following systems: Do you have a web farm set up? Is the web site managed by a CMS? Does your organisation use a CRM like Salesforce, or do you need to outsource one? Do you have a session management tool in place? Will you require an SAM system or a user security manager? How are web pages served up? CDN, IIS, Apache? 8 October 2012 How to Implement a Paywall Page 5 of 7 There also needs to be a trigger mechanism to lock down pages in the journey, particularly in a soft paywall or a combination paywall, selecting which pages are locked and managing where a paywall comes in is crucial. Building trigger points into a CMS is generally the simplest way for this to be managed and maintained by the content owner. When a customer comes to purchase the content, their personal data and vulnerable payment details have to be stored somewhere. With existing CRM systems in place, such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics, this can be built into the CRM, or alternatively you may wish to house this data externally with the payment solutions provider and reviewing their systems, data protection and delivery model needs to be considered. Crucially you will also need to create a purchase flow design to understand the customer’s journey from selection to purchase and onto content delivery. It is imperative to make this as simple as possible and thereby reducing the potential drop-offs and obstacles for purchase. Understanding how your systems are currently configured plays a major part in how you would establish the working paywall solution. Working with an expert paywall integrator means they would be able to draw upon their experience and advise you in the best ways of working with your current systems to implement the most suitable setup for your paywall requirements. Delivering a project such as this also requires buy in from