Once people are signed up for free, feed them the premium membership concept at the end of articles (“Enjoyed this article? Get more with Premium membership, only £10 a month”).

Okay now, i want to see what this trial is about, but what’s next? I don’t mind giving out my age, but postal address? There’s only one reason they’d need it at all – to send me spam on paper. I’m safe from that being overseas, but my phone number… SMS spam offers don’t have any boundaries.
Now why are they so damn surprised that noone wants to register?

What are the chances that some good design decisions were sabotaged by stakeholders?

I wouldn’t trust a Murdoch to treat users with any respect.

I’m a regular timesonline reader, and while I’ve signed up, it bugs the hell out of me that if I come back to it after a few hours, I have to sign in again, especially if I want to read another article. At least give me keyboard focus on the login details in the box so that it’s easy to sign in!

As someone else says, it is also annoying that you can’t sign in till the page loads.

Yes, but neither the content nor the period is clear. They talk about “exclusive free preview” and “for a limited period”.

2. How do you feel about being required to enter your date of birth into a registration form? And your full postal address? And being asked to enter your phone number?

You need to be 18 to read a newspaper? What did I miss? Postal address, e-mail address and phone number for a trial? No way! I know this newspaper and it is quality they deliver. I was really interested in a trial until I saw the second screen with all those questions. Also, on the first screen they ask you for an e-mail address you need to confirm on a second screen? This is tricking people. A potential customer thinks that all they will ask for a trial is an e-mail address and fills it in … . At The Times they must have thought that if the customer refuses to fill in the questions on the second page, they at least have her/his e-mail address.

3. What paid packages are available? What’s the difference between “subscription” and “membership”?

£50 for 12 months. Subscription is only the newspaper; membership you also get Culture or Travel. I need to admit that I found this info on http://www.mytimesplus.co.uk/. On the “real” page of The Times, I couldn’t find how much I need to pay for a subscription. Also, everything is in £. They are maybe not interested in “foreign” paying customers.

4. What tangible freebies do you get with membership?

That info is listed in the section “What do I get?” I guess.

Ideally since they’re showing a brief home page snippet anyway, I’d go to the page of the article, but only show the snippet and registration/subscription information below it if the user isn’t logged in and subscribed already. No modal box, no jumping screens, no hard to find close button.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWteTA_XncQ

I’m not going to let my paper die… I’m not going to let any paper die… I’m not going to stop until I destroy the mainframe.
- The mainframe of what?
The internet!
- Do you even know how the internet works?

http://skitch.com/jaygooby/dejcj/times-paywall

Tease them with the article they clicked on underneath, just ask for an email to continue to read it.

Send all the paywall blurb in the email. If they access another article after some pre-determined session time-out, tell them to complete the registration process/check their in-box/send them another registration email.

I wonder why they didn’t set up redirects?

Fools, I assume. If I were unethical and interested in taking advantage of fools then I’m sure I’d do something like adding obnoxious popups, downloads, tricky ui, unconscionable privacy terms, etc. Then as soon as you get enough credit card numbers max them all out and move to Mexico.

But I have some morals.

Assuming that you can charge for text content online is foolhardy. Even ebooks’ days are numbered.

1/ Close button as mentioned above.
2/ Lazy registration, Name, Email, and pwd.
3/ Read more link to find out the what-fors of the new regime
4/ 3 (or so) buttons underneath the image in a “plans” box; a) free plan, b) paid subscriptions c) paid memberships, with “learn more” and “sign up now”
Box 2 = “already registered”
Box 3 = “to continue please register”

I’d consider allowing people to click through to that article for nothing. That way, the nag box becomes just that, a nag box. Then, if the user wants to constantly avoid the nag box, they sign up.

Either that, or remove the nag box, and cut the articles (every article) to a couple of paragraphs.

Notwithstanding that this is a monumentally risky idea just as Jeff Jarvis says.

PS the Lightbox link in image 2 is hhttp, not http, so I am getting an error.