ABC MULTI-PLATFORM: Indy website reports 20% growth in December 2012

By Arif Durrani, mediaweek.co.uk, Thursday, 24 January 2013 01:15PM

The Independent website enjoyed a near 20% lift in traffic in the last month of 2012, according to figures released by ABC today, fuelled by the success of its new comments site Independent Voices.

ABC Multi-platform: December 2012 results are published

The number of unique browsers for The Independent was up 18.9% month on month from 17.8 million to 21,251,877. The amount of traffic being driven by its comments section is said to have doubled since the Independent Voices site was launched last September.

Zach Leonard, managing director of digital at The Independent, said: "This is great growth for The Independent on the back of strong content and improvements to our basic infrastructure. We are hopeful will can sustain the momentum."

December 2012 also proved to be a strong month for Mirror Group Digital, the website network that includes Mirror.co.uk, 3am.co.uk and MirrorFootball.co.uk, where monthly browsers were up 11.88% to 18,488,370. Daily unique browsers rose 7.8% to 859,318.

News International’s website for its tabloid newspaper, Sun.co.uk, reported monthly users up 1.45% to 24,635,117 and daily browsers 0.13% to 1,562,470.

Elsewhere, there were slight falls in traffic for Guardian.co.uk, Telegraph.co.uk, and Mail Online.

Mail Online remains the market leader, up 35% year on year to 7,038,933, though it was down 0.9% on November's figures.

Monthly browsers to the site for Daily Mail & General Trust’s free, city-centric newspaper, Metro, plummeted by a third following its revamp at the start of December.

Monthly traffic fell 32.24% to 5,227,151, while its daily uniques slumped 33.69% to 211,537 in December. The newspaper is confident traffic will stabilise on the site, which has been redesigned with consumers’ mobile devices top of mind.

This article was first published on mediaweek.co.uk