Limit guest views

[Cedric]

What is your opinion in limiting page views for guests and redirecting or forcing them to register once they've hit that pre-set limit?

I have an add on like this installed but currently disabled. I tried it for a week or so, but didn't notice anything positive nor negative.

 

[Arantor]

I see several pitfalls.

1. Put the threshold too low, and it will drive people away (or they'll figure out getting round it)
2. Put the threshold too high and the people who come by for a couple of topics will never see it and never be incentivised to stick around.
3. Depending on specific implementation this can limit or even entirely block search engines from crawling your entire site.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I think it depends on your end goal.

Gated content is practice that is still widely used today because it works. Most online newspapers use it and they retain customers still.

You have to have the kind of content that makes people want to join (or pay if you have a pay gate) or it won't work.

I think you really have to focus on great copywriting skills for the public view part.

If a forum is full of one liner topics, I'm going to log off after the gate comes up. If it has awesome content that makes me want to discuss it, you'll likely get a new member

 

[Cedric]

I see several pitfalls.

1. Put the threshold too low, and it will drive people away (or they'll figure out getting round it)
2. Put the threshold too high and the people who come by for a couple of topics will never see it and never be incentivised to stick around.
3. Depending on specific implementation this can limit or even entirely block search engines from crawling your entire site.

The add on we had installed didn't block search engines, but I can't tell for sure, it's only what the dev told me.

 

[Arantor]

To be honest I never actually saw the block here if there was one, but I probably didn't visit enough times before just deciding to join!

 

[Cory]

Forcing users to register after X attempts of visiting the board almost seems like those sites that try and make you view ads when you have them blocked, so it is kind of annoying overall. I don't tend to visit boards often that have such a feature enabled. If I truly wanted to register a site, I would do so on my own time and not let such a feature entice me to register for the sake of viewing more content.

 

[Heatman]

You have to have the kind of content that makes people want to join (or pay if you have a pay gate) or it won't work.

This is it with actually having your forum guests turning out to register in your forum. If the kind of contents you have is something they can't get away from, they will most likely 95% register to have full access to everything.