WSJ.com Increases Traffic and Reinforces Roadblocks

Implications: With unique users up 94% and total page views up only 45%, it's clear that wsj.com has found more ways to introduce non-subscribers to the frustrations of its site

Analysis: It's always a good bet that any Rupert Murdoch-owned news vehicle will find ways to attract people's attention.  (Just look at Fox News this week: accused of allowing racism against Obama, poor taste in showing a dead model's body, and childishly doctoring the photos of New York Times journalists).

And in a year like this -- amid election fever, financial meltdowns, and general economic woes --  it's only natural that more people than usual would be interested in the Journal's news and opinion.

June numbers show that the Online Journal attracted 16.2 million unique users in June -- up 94%.  Yet total page views are up only 45%.  The logical explanation: the new traffic is being lured to free articles by news aggregators and bloggers, but not sticking around to read more than one or two items (or ferret around to find other free (i.e. less good) stuff.

How valuable is this traffic to The Journal and its advertisers?  Are any of these grazers being lured to subscribe to the product?

With print subscriptions still available for $79 -- with online just a $20 add-on, it's clear that the Journal is having a very tough time convincing average news consumers of the value of its products. It has proved, however, that as more and more people go online for news, they are willing to flit in and out of The Journal's site to follow up a headline.

Increasing traffic is the easy part.  But so far, it only proves that more people than ever are discovering The Journal's roadblocks.