Registration is NOT bad.

The only thing bad with registration is:

1) Not providing ANY real reason for the user to do it. Just putting up a wall to “read a story” is doom for your website. Just ask any Belo or Knight Ridder/McClatchy property out there… Really.

2) Not using the data to RESEARCH and really make money off of. Think about how much data is collected off registration and then think about how much it is used. Really. And don’t sit there and say “We use it to sell more ads” Do you? Really? Ask your sales people how much they do. They DON’T!!! It’s all a scam. If you don’t have one FULL TIME person to analyze all that data (and there is a ton) and then work with the sales staff to make them make use of it, then — guess what — you aren’t using it. It is being lost in a blackhole.

So, registration with proper incentives and properly MINED is worthwhile. Otherwise, it is B.S. that people in your corporate interactive departments came up with to save their hides and to “look smart” Really.

Registration being up 380 percent is IRRELEVANT unless that info is being USED for something!!!!

The only question I would have would be is how that percentage translates into numbers of people that registered for the site and continue to use it and how many were competitors or were alerted to the site redesign that decided to register just to skim the site for ideas on how they could tweak their own sites.

Maybe more media outlets will see this and start implementing similar functionality on their sites now.

I liked the old design much better.

The new design is unwatchable for me.