The Warren Group: Transforming Newspaper Websites to Boost Engagement & Conversions.

Integration With Subscription Management Platform Enhances Data Visibility.

As a multisite publisher, The Warren Group receives and manages subscriptions across all its websites. The publisher wanted to create a singular view of all subscriptions and funnel this data to its subscription management and accounting system.

Our web developers created a seamless API integration that positions The Warren Group’s primary website as the central informational hub between its news websites and the company’s subscription management and accounting system. All subscription purchase, fulfillment, and renewal data flows through The Warren Group website, making it easier for the company to view subscription data in one place, without having to navigate multiple platforms.

This integration also provides the subscriber more control over their own user account, allowing them to view their order history, active subscriptions, purchase additional products and services, and manage payment options.

Implementing Gated Content Converts Visitors into Subscribers.

The Warren Group recently had a hard paywall on its websites that blocked visitors’ access to web content unless they purchased a subscription. This made it challenging for a new audience to discover the value of the website’s content before moving to purchase a subscription. The hard paywall also limited the reach of The Warren Group’s content. For instance, an existing subscriber could not share an article with their colleague, a nonsubscriber. As part of a larger initiative to grow its subscriber base, The Warren Group came to us to rethink how the publisher can structure access to gated content on the websites for Banker & Tradesman, The Registry Review, and The Commercial Record.

To encourage readership, our web developers implemented a metered paywall on all of The Warren Group’s websites. This ‘soft’ paywall allows visitors to read a predetermined number of articles before nudging them to purchase a subscription. We also implemented tools that counter user attempts to evade the paywall and protect specific content.

Talking about her experience working with GraVoc on this project, Cassidy said, “GraVoc’s web development team walked us through the design of the paywall, how best to implement it, and how to apply it retroactively to the content already on the site. They were great at helping us identify potential issues and creatively addressing the ones The Warren Group failed to anticipate during the planning phase. The paywall is now updated, limiting nonsubscribers to three articles per month, prompting them to become new subscribers.”

With the metered paywall, The Warren Group is seeing a steady uptick in new subscriptions and renewals.

“The implementation of the metered paywall is still fairly new, but we’re already seeing nonsubscribers convert after hitting their three-article limit. There have also been a handful of subscribers who can’t get beyond the paywall because their subscriptions have lapsed, and have renewed. The messaging on the third article has very clear language with options to log in or purchase a subscription, which has been helpful in limiting the number of confused subscribers. Overall, it was an important update to the sites that we hope will yield additional subscribers going forward, and we couldn’t have done it without GraVoc.”