Paywalls: Rethink Your Premium Icons
It seems like a good idea to have an icon on paywalled content – but what if we've been doing it wrong? Some publishers have started flipping the logic.
As publishers either implement or revisit their paywalls, a question always arises: How should we label or illustrate our premium content? (The content behind the paywall, that is.)
What is the best icon?
A common symbol is the lock (🔒) as it very clearly communicates that the content is locked and you need a key (a subscription) to access it.
But the lock isn't actually a very good icon since it's very excluding. "Here is some content, but you can't access it – so go away," it seems to say. As locks usually do.
So... what else can you do?