The West Australian’s website has had a major refresh, owner Seven West Media has announced.
The announcement;
Seven West Media launches new updates to The West Australian website
Today Seven West Media launched a new version of The West Australian website, available at www.thewest.com.au.
The update comes just 16 months after The West Australian took control of its direct to consumer digital products from Yahoo7, relaunching The West Australian website in December 2016 and launching The West Australian mobile app in April 2017, followed by the acquisition and relaunch of PerthNow in November 2017.
Backed by Seven West Media’s integrated newsroom, which harnesses the power of The West Australian, The Sunday Times, PerthNow and 7 News Perth, The West Australian is WA’s leading destination for online news.
The new website launched today is fully responsive and delivers significant improvements to the user interface, with a cleaner design, better navigation, the ability to feature more video from 7 News Perth and a closer alignment with the look and feel of the newspaper.
The update follows record online traffic for The West Australian, with a digital reach of 1.12m unique audience – up 76% year on year. SWM WA’s total digital reach (including The West Australian and PerthNow) was a record 1.65m UA – up 44% year on year. SWM’s total audience (excluding Yahoo7) was a record 4.23m UA – up 51% year on year (Nielsen DRM, February 2018).
SWM WA has also achieved record video growth since its departure from Yahoo7, with monthly video streams of 2.8m – up 56% year on year (SWM internal analytics, February 2018)
Creating a high impact and brand safe environment for advertisers is an important element of Seven West Media’s digital offering. The new digital product will also provide significantly improved advertising opportunities, including a new homepage takeover and improved ad viewability.
Editor of The West Australian Brett McCarthy said: “We deliver quality, compelling journalism in print and online every day. The experience our readers have when they consume our journalism online is important to us and this update significantly improves that experience.”
The West Australian has seen significant growth in the past few years and Seven West Media will continue to update and invest in its digital offering with plans to roll out similar updates to The West Australian mobile app in the near future.
From a Seven West Media release