The Witness' website
To put up the wall or not… that is the question facing all newspapers today as they wrestle with the online paywall issue. On the one hand, putting all your newspaper’s content on the web for free may well cull the circulation of your physical print product and if you can’t generate enough advertising on your site to even cover its costs, then a paywall seems the best route. On the other hand, by creating a paywall the number of website users may dwindle to such an extent, that you’ll end up heading off to the digital equivalent of Nowhereville.
This week in my Bizcommunity column, I wrote about Avusa’s plans to put up paywalls on its Eastern Cape titles, The Herald in Port Elizabeth and the Daily Dispatch in East London — possibly in the next three months. This move spells the first of the big three media houses with serious online presences — Avusa, Media24 and Independent Newspapers — to experiment with a paywall.
But the very first South African broadsheet to go this route — albeit with a partial paywall — was actually The Witness based in Pietermartizburg.
The Witness, which is 50% owned by Media24, blocked access to its unique KZN content (and not to more generic wire copy covering national and international news) in November last year. The aims were modest: to generate enough income to bolster its very small web operation rather than to make loads of profit. Even so the step wasn’t taken lightly and the paper’s deputy editor, Yves Vanderhaeghen who also oversees the online operation, wrote this piece in November explaining the move to the paper’s readers and website users.
This week, I asked Yves for an update on how their paywall experiment was going, six months down the line, and he had this rather heartening message for others about to step boldly into the paywall arena:
Contrary to what was predicted, The Witness’s website traffic has not plummeted into the depths of obscurity. Where there were usually 5500 unique users per day without the paywall, the daily average has dropped and plateau’d at an average of 4100, while the average time on the website has increased from 6 minutes to 13 minutes. There is a measure that some people stay on the website for hours, thus skewing the graph… but this was the same before the implementation of a paid-for subscription system.
Classifieds is still most readers’ port of call on the site (33000 of the 95000 visits last month). The habits of online users still seem to indicate that readers are interested in getting a brief overview of the day’s news – as even articles which are not marked with a ‘P’ (i.e. paid-for content) are not clicked on as much as those marked with a ‘P’.
Comments and feedback have decreased, and now the majority of the comments come in forums of debate (letters, features) rather than as an immediate response to news – which has now been clamped down with the paywall. The plus side is that it has reduced what would often be a wave of obscene comments to an aggravating news story, which would generally need careful pruning, if they were at all usable (swear words, racism, etc).
Now, isn’t this interesting, people? It seems it’s not all gloom and doom and there is indeed a proportion of people out there in the ether prepared to pay for content. The fact that The Witness still allows free access to the national and international wire copy may be a key part of the puzzle. I’d be keen to hear your thoughts on the issue.
Click here to read an earlier column of mine at Moneyweb, in February 2010, about The Witness’ move.
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What a pity Yves won’t tell us how many paying subscribers he has? Why? Please tell, Yves? There can’t be any business reasons for not saying so since you have no competitors.
Here we go, guys. Yves says:
“Paying subscribers we’ll keep to ourselves for now.
On the second question, some stats (data for the past month):
General Overview:
101,070 Visits
303,658 Pageviews
3.00 Pages/Visit
45.09% Bounce Rate
00:13:31 Avg. Time on Site
36.74% % New Visits
Traffic sources:
Search Engines: 45,008.00 (44.53%)
Direct Traffic: 42,625.00 (42.17%)
Referring Sites: 13,407.00 (13.27%)
Other: 30 (0.03%)
I think the public debate point is spot on. Before the paywall (BP?) we has a deluge of comments daily, especially from younger readers, many of which we would also then publish in our letters columns to spice them up. The range of issues that elicited comments tended to be very diverse, and we also used these volumes to gauge which stories grabbed readers, which in turn guided us in where to devote our scarce resources. After paywall (AP), comments have dwindled to a trickle, which has impoverished us editorially.”
Hi Jude and Joe. I’ll ask Yves and, as they say, revert.
In the absence of data to the contrary the article just shows an audience that remains loyal to the website and who may be using it for access to general content rather than specific local content.
It would be useful to know percentage of users who access the site directly rather than through search and what Witness’s bounce rate is, as this may suggest users. I am guessing well over 60% of users are accessing Witness content via search engines and bounce rate would suggest actual loyalty (though have to admit those session times are intriguing).
Of concern to the role of the press (beyond making a profit) is the disregard for the Web as a platform for public debate (no matter how one regards their opinions). I remain concerned that unless sites develop alternative spaces for public discourse, we will continue to have the elite talking to itself and put a lid on potential for genuine public dialogue.
Very encouraging….but can Yves Vanderhaeghen tells up roughly how many PAYING subscribers he has?