[Sigia-l] Display of unavailable areas within site

[Jeff Lash]

I'm looking for examples of sites that have some areas that certain users can 
not access. Are there any sites that let users "pick and choose" what areas 
they have access to?

That probably doesn't make much sense. Here's my attempt at an example:

Let's say a site has Area A, Area B, Area C, and Area D.

Everyone can see Area A. You don't need to register or sign in or pay or 
anything.

If you sign up for the site, you can see Area B also.

If you pay money, you can see Area C and D. But you can buy each one 
separately, so some paying customers may see Areas A,B,C, some A,B,D. 

At some point there will be more areas, meaning you'll have some people who 
can get to A,B,C,E,G, some who can get to A,B,C,H,I, some who can get to 
A,B,D,I... the combinations are endless.

(Please, let's not debate the idea of whether it makes sense to let 
users "pick and choose" what areas they can see, which is another subject 
entirely.)

So -- are there any examples of sites like this? Has anyone worked on 
creating such a site?

The main questions I have are about how to show areas people don't have 
access to. Do you hide them entirely? If so, how do they know that it exists 
(how can you "upsell" them on something they're not aware of)? Do you show 
them, but then display a message saying that they can't access it?

What about a "home" page -- is it be specific to the areas one has access to, 
or is be more generic to display the types of information they could get? 
There's a fine line we're trying to walk between providing access to the 
areas available to the user and soft-selling other areas.

Obviously there are more issues -- usability, sales/marketing, content -- and 
this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I wanted to get some initial 
reactions and examples of how other sites approach this. I've seen many sites 
that divide between free/pay-for-access areas, but can't remember any that 
have multiple levels of access.

Thanks,

Jeff
--
http://jefflash.com