various stakeholders within your business, from the IT department to Marketing, Sales and most

 various stakeholders within your business, from the IT department to Marketing, Sales and most importantly the executive. Forming of a project team to ensure all departments are bought into the project and their considerations are matched from the outset, can ensure that the project delivery is as smooth as possible. Setting of time scales is vital and for the most part paywall systems can be delivered in less than 6 months. However time scales can be impacted if new requirements come to light as the project is underway. This illustrates how crucial it can be to ensure you form a multi-departmental project team at the outset to ensure all requirements are identified as much as possible from the start. Furthermore, combining and centralising existing and new customers can be problematic, not least where legacy systems are in place. With print subscribers, iTunes and Android app users and online subscribers all sitting separately, the ability to up-sell and cross-sell products can be difficult. Centralising these customers into a single system and offering multi-channel entitlement where a customer pays once but accesses all different channels of content, delivers a much improved

 experience for the customer. Encouraging users to move from iTunes for example, where a user’s data isn’t shared, to purchasing direct means that a company is better able to own their customer’s data and manage that brand-user relationship. Ultimately, understanding your customers, your content, what systems you have in place and what systems you require to make the process work for your organisation will help to make a project successful from a technical and commercial perspective. 8 October 2012 How to Implement a Paywall Page 6 of 7 What billing types and models to utilise Crucially, a paywall requires an effective billing solution to make it work. Once again, coming back to your customers will help to dictate the type and complexity of a billing solution you require. If your customers are global, there needs to be a range of payment types on offer, such as credit or debit card, which are very popular in the UK and USA, but not so much in parts of mainland Europe. Some form of direct bank transfer such as Direct Debt in the UK needs to be offered as this accounts for an increasing number of transactions processed. Local payment types such as Giropay and Ideal are recommended as well and alternate payment types such as Paypal can all help to ensure that your customers are offered the optimal payment types for their markets and thus ensure no obstacles to

 payment are created. A payment system should certainly offer differing payment methods from a straight-through payment. Subscriptions are vital for a publishing company and truly form the basis of a repeat customer coming back to view paywall-protected content as well as providing a regular predictable recurring revenue. eWallets are also common where users are able to fund their wallet and draw down from it with a single click purchase in the future. Additional functionality such as offers and incentives modules will enable a company to tie their marketing strategies together with their payment systems. Crucially, a payment system cannot be over functional, as the ability to extend your options and functionality in the future allows for natural growth. In Summary The implementation of a paywall is a complex project with many considerations to take before a project begins. With commercial, marketing and technical departmental requirements to name a few, the management of such a project requires a paywall expert to ensure all questions are answered and that the long term requirements of a project are met and exceeded. Ultimately though, with a well-managed implementation, a paywall can truly help to maximise potential revenues generated and ensure the long term future of the digital publishing industry. To understand mo]