By Minal Bopaiah

Many paywalled news sites decide to show the first few lines of a news story before blocking access.

But did you know that your offer copy right below the truncated article can affect your conversion rate significantly?

Which Test Won just featured an A/B test done on The Times article page as part of their annual testing awards Webinar. In both versions of The Times’ test pages, an offer to subscribe sat below the first few paragraphs of an article (the rest of the text was whited-out).

In one version (version A), the subscription offer clearly stated up top: “Want the full article and instant website access?”

In another version (version B), the subscription offer assumed audiences knew that subscribing would get them access.

The test found that version A increased clicks to subscribe by 115.9%. That’s huge!

While test results should not be generalized, I particularly liked this test because it conveys the importance of subscription sites making their paywall strategy clear and their subscription funnel explicit. Just because you’ve read everything about The New York Times metered paywall, don’t presume your audience has or knows how one works. They may assume your article has ended after three paragraphs and not see any reason to subscribe.

So when in doubt, spell it out!