Audible Paywall: From Content, to Subscription to Content | Series.
This series looks at the paywalls employed by a variety of online content producers. The user journey, the amount of information required from the user, the payment methods offered and the ease of unsubscribing. These are all key to ensuring the success of a paywall, hence why we created this series and are analyzing the conversion funnels of these publishers.
Remember, however, that your most valuable tool to persuading a reader to take out their credit card and subscribe is your value proposition and content.
We'll cover:
- The Financial Times Paywall
- The Washington Post Paywall
- The New York Times Paywall
- Quartz Paywall
- Wired Paywall
- The Athletic Paywall
- Netflix Paywall (VOD)
- Canal+ Paywall (VOD)
- Audible Paywall (audio)
Interested in implementing a paywall and subscription strategy with the same success as these publishers? Poool have a simple, flexible platform to allow you to do exactly this, and without the need for tech support at every turn!
Book a demoToday: Audible!
What's required of a user wishing to subscribe to Audible?
- 5 clicks are needed to subscribe and browse content
- 2 scrolls are required
- 10 fields need to be filled out (including fields concerning the home address for a 100% digital subscription);
- only one payment method is available (card).
So, step by step.
Step 1: try Audible Free
Once on the Audible website, we click on the inviting offer “Click to Try Audible free”.
Step 2: creating an Amazon account
Then we're asked to sign in to our Amazon account, or create one. We need to create an Amazon account.
For the creation of the account, we have to provide our name, email address and then choose a password and confirm it.
We are sent a one-time password to verify our email address.
Step 3: recap of the offer and payment
Our account has now been created and we need to provide our bank details. Only one payment method is available.
Here, the user is reminded that they are receiving a 30-day free trial and that they will be charged $14.95 after this time has elapsed. Two scrolls are needed to fill out the payment form and pay. This requires both our home address and mobile phone number, perhaps not necessarily needed but may mean that they send advertising/promotions by mail.
- Full name
- Country
- Address line 1
- Address line 2 (optional)
- Zip code
- City
- Phone number
Note: The ‘start free trial’ button turns orange when the required details are filled in.
Step 3: start browsing
After having clicked on “Start Free Trial”, we are directed to the home page and encouraged to find our first listen. A summary of our subscription is sent by email.
That’s it, we’ve subscribed to Audible and were able to listen to audiobooks!
To sum it up, here are the steps to subscribe to Audible:
- 5 clicks are needed to subscribe and browse content
- 2 scrolls are required
- 10 fields need to be filled out (email, password, confirmation of password, OTP number, name, country, address, postal code, city, phone number) - This is quite a high number compared to other paywalls analyzed
- a single payment method is available (card)
What about mobile devices?
The same subscription journey, same number of clicks and same options. The display is adjusted though to fit the smaller screen better.
Interested in integrating Poool's Paywall into your site? Our Paywall platform allows you to segment audiences, block content differently depending on the user's context, A/B test journeys, analyze and optimize, all within our Dashboard!