Telegraph’s online focus starts bearing ABCe fruits

It posted a 65% increase in unique users year on year to 12 million in January and a 17% rise from the previous month.

While The Daily Telegraph’s online growth between December and January was the smallest of the major daily newspaper websites, its year-on-year growth was 26 percentage points higher than that of the next in line, thesun.co.uk.

Alison Reay, digital media director at the Telegraph Media Group, said the company is now focusing on breaking news online and in print.

“That approach has had a massive impact on our figures,” she said. “We promoted ongoing updates on the Heath Ledger story online and that became the second-largest search term result at the time, behind Madeleine McCann stories.”

The ABCe figures also showed that the number of global page views on telegraph.co.uk was higher than timesonline.co.uk.

She said: “While we had 12.3 million unique users compared to 15 million for The Times, we had 113 million page views against their 106 million, showing our users have stickiness. They’re staying on the site and looking at more pages and while it is as much about acquiring unique users, it’s also about getting people to stay within the site.”

Meanwhile, last month’s revamp of the Mail on Sunday’s print edition, which has already boosted print circulation, has also benefited its online offering. The ABCe figure for both the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday was 31% higher in January compared with December.

The Mail sites are enjoying the biggest overseas audience, with 12 million users coming from other countries. The Guardian, which still leads, with a 25% year-on-year increase, also registered high overseas traffic, with 55% of its 19.7 million users logging on from abroad.