Recent reports of BostonGlobe.com’s free trial offer (April 24 – May 6) allowed me to take a closer looks at the company’s conversion and revenues. It turns out that Beantown’s flagship news outlet has only been able to convert 18,000 readers into paying subscribers since instituting a paywall last September. With 6.2 million unique visitors in 2011, that puts the site’s conversion rate at about 0.3%.

That also means that the site can be expected to garner about $3 million in subscription revenues this year. Compare that to The New York Times with 450,000 paid subscriptions and a conservative estimate of $77 million in subscription revenues, and you can see why the powers-that-be at the Globe are willing to buck best practices by offering a free trial without requiring a credit card number (we strongly recommend against this).

Some have speculated that the low conversion rate may be because the Globe has failed to articulate the benefit of its online platform, other than the site’s ability to adapt to any mobile device. It may also be because the Globe doesn’t have the national (and international) appeal of the New York Times. Plus, putting free content on Boston.com and having a more stringent paywall on BostonGlobe.com (there’s no metered access like the Times), makes it a difficult sell with no foot-in-the-door offer. And lastly, the Globe has chosen to make online access free to its print subscribers. While this may be an enticing tactic for some papers, valuing online content separately and pricing it similar to print has allowed other legacy print publications to garner more profits during this period of trial-and-error in the digital publishing industry.

But in this week’s Case Study on our sister site, Subscription Site Insider, Mike Zenga of SportsBettingProfessor.com shares with readers his experience with overlays. Zenga originally had the site coded to offer an “exit” overlay when people were looking to abandon the site. Also known as friction points, these overlays often ask site visitors to engage once more before leaving, clicking “Stay on page” or “Exit” before they are allowed to navigate to another page.

While some sites have had success with these types of overlays, Zenga and his business partner felt they were just annoying. So they decided to remove them and see what happens. To their pleasant surprise, there was no decrease (or increase) in conversions. So they’ve decided to remove exit overlays permanently from the site.

As Justin Rondeau, Editor of our sister site WhichTestWon.com would say, this is why you always need to test your pages. Consumer behavior and conversion rates will vary by site, by niche, and by topic. So learn from the best, but always do your own research.

We were also fortunate enough to get our guest judge, FT.com’s Optimization Manager Reagan Miller, to talk us through a two-step test he conducted for The Financial Times. To view the creatives and results data from these tests, use our special $1 offer to sign up and see the 30-minute video.

But as this week’s Case Study on our sister site, Subscription Site Insider, shows, you would be wrong.

IdentityForce’s CEO Steve Bearak let us in on some of his company’s A/B testing results. Surprisingly, despite the incredible wealth and complexity of IdentityForce’s services, they got better conversions with less text and more visuals. In fact, the company routinely sees 65% of visitors converting for the free trial offer. (One key visual was the Better Business Bureau icon.) All they included to lead visitors to a more in-depth description of their services was a line of hyperlinked text in a font size smaller than the body copy. Ingenious.

So if you’re looking to redesign your conversion pages (and you should be reviewing your design on a regular basis), remember this equation: Less Text + More Visuals = Better Conversions.

Brian Hunt, Publisher of The Recorder

When speaking to Brian Hunt about his upcoming talk at Subscription Site Insider’s April Summit in San Francisco, he mentioned that his publication, The Recorder — which provides California attorneys with daily industry updates — has done a better than average job of targeting an old-fashioned marketplace that loves paper to subscribe to their online content.

How did The Recorder do it? Brian will give the full answer at the Summit, but we suspect their highly effective site tour video had something to do with it. With lovely blue highlighting, the video has a professional quality while explaining the basics of navigating the site, including the multiple ways one can search for a particular topic or article. While this may seem rudimentary for digital publishers, it’s imperative that these easy messages are conveyed to paper-friendly audiences in clear, concise language with visual displays. If the video’s well done (i.e., a calming narrative voice, clear visuals, and smooth transitions), even an advanced user will sit through it– and leave with a better impression of your publication.

The Recorder also does some other interesting things — like providing both a free 30-day trial of full content (with credit card) and a 90-day trial of limited content. Come see Brian speak at our April Summit to find out which trial has better conversion rates!

But subscription site execs might not have as much to fear as you think. True, Google’s constantly changing platform makes it more difficult for businesses to, well, do business — especially when the rules to get to the goal post change as you’re running down the field. And search traffic is important. But not as important as conversion.

As Avinash Kaushik mentioned in a recent speech at the SES conference in New York, online businesses need to get past “the 2%” of measuring clicks and page visits and focus on the value of the interaction. This is done by measuring both micro and macro conversions, he said. By getting a more 3-dimensional picture of members, subscription sites will have the recurring revenues to withstand the  bottom-line fluctuations caused by Google’s mercurial business practices.

Bill has a tremendous amount of experience in increasing customer conversion and retention for an impressive roster of clients, including The Motley Fool, FidelityInsight.com and Toppik.com. He’s also launched new digital products for Edweek.org and HomeDecorBuyer.com.

We’re super excited to have Bill speaking at our April Summit in San Francisco on the Top 10 (Profitable) Marketing Tips for Subscription Sites. For more examples of Bill’s clients and expertise, check out the slideshare below. Then buy your ticket for Subscription Site Insider‘s Summit today!

The Web seems to be burdened by the same excessive wordiness that plagued newspapers back at the turn of the last century (that’s 1900, not 2000). Look at how little copy is needed nowadays to market the same product:

The same is true when it comes to designing your call-to-action buttons on your site. Make it one button with two choices. That’s it. The last thing you want to do is make your visitors suffer from decision fatigue. Fresh tilled soil has some great examples on their site, including the remake of MobileMe into iCloud. Note how the iCloud design is able to maintain the Apple design elements (gray, curved box) while minimizing the design into a two-option choice. Easy, peasy. (For users. Your design team may need some time.)

To be clear, The Guardian does have a subscription service — users of its iPhone app can access three free articles per day before being asked to subscribe monthly. But the iPad app will start charging existing users (now receiving content under a free promotion with Channel 4 in the UK) for any content. New users will be allowed a seven-day trial before being facing a hard paywall asking for the monthly £9.99 subscription.

Meanwhile, the NY Times and People are giving new subscribers a discounted Nook, courtesy of Barnes & Noble. As yesterday’s post details, gadget tie-ins are tricky. This one might fare better because the publications are requiring payment, not offering a free trial or looking for opt-ins. And every subscriber will get a Nook at a discounted price, instead of just a chance to win one.

Hopefully we’ll be able to see their retention rates in a year and determine whether gadgets and subs go well together. But I remain doubtful.

It’s a nice way to get B2B referrals and opt-ins for your list. The problem may be in retention. Sweepstakes hounds, like extreme coupon clippers, will be willing to sign up for a free trial of anything and then cancel their subscription after the drawing.

A more savvy approach might be to offer the sweepstakes for people who pay for a reduced price trial period — say$1 for 2 weeks? That way you’ve jumped over the pay hurdle and begun cultivating a relationship with people more likely to be genuinely interested in your content. When it comes to opt-ins, numbers count, but so does the quality of your leads.