ABC: Metro records 27% traffic rise in March

Visitor numbers to Metro's new 'responsive' website rose by 27.3 per cent in March, according to figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulation today.

Online traffic for the popular commuter title reached 7.8 million in March, with daily traffic rising by 17 per cent.

This increase comes after online viewing figures for Metro dropped by more than 30 per cent at the start of the year following the introduction of a mobile-first strategy and new website in November 2012.

The March increase takes Metro's online readership above the level it was in November before the dip, when Metro reported 7.7 million monthly readers.

Jamie Walters, product development director at Metro, predicted such a rise in January when he told Journalism.co.uk: "Our urbanite audience [is] consuming more content on the move with page views up 33 per cent across mobile devices."

Metro recorded the biggest month-on-month increases for UK newspaper websites in March, a month which saw increases across the board in terms of monthly readership for all ABC-audited news websites.

Fellow free pick-up newspaper the London Evening Standard saw monthly web traffic rise by 13 per cent – totaling 4.2 million unique users – and an increase in daily visitors by 1.4 per cent.

The only other website to experience an increase in daily visitors was the Independent, which reported a month-on-month increase of 7.2 per cent to 25.2 million and a marginal increase of 0.41 per cent in daily browsers.

Elsewhere, The Sun recorded a 3.1 per cent increase in monthly browsers, the Telegraph online readership was up 2.7 per cent, Mail Online increased by 1.75 per cent and Mirror Group Digital reported an increase of 1.1 percent.

The Mail Online's monthly readership in March was nearly 113 million.

Despite only witnessing an increase of just over one per cent in terms of monthly browsers, the new figure of 78.3 million represents a new record for the Guardian, Guardian News & Media said in an email attributing the rise to the site's responsive design relaunch in November 2012.

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