The Sun's website traffic falls by 14 per cent
The Sun’s web traffic has fallen by more than 10 per cent since the tabloid title relaxed its paywall.
A decline in traffic to The Sun’s site saw a fall of 14 per cent to 1.1 million average daily visitors in September, just two months after loosening its online paywall.
The slump has been somewhat expected and follows a trend among the tabloids following the end of the football transfer window on 1 September.
It coincides with the decision to make content available outside its digital paywall, which was introduced in 2013, in an attempt to capitalise on the accelerating trend of news sharing across Facebook and Twitter.
Other titles hit by the annual slump include the Daily Star, Mirror and the Metro. The worst affected was the Daily Star, which saw average daily visitors fall 35 per cent. This was closely followed by The Metro which suffered a 33.9 per cent drop in its daily average visitors.
Speaking to The Guardian, editorial director for Mirror Online, Pete Picton, appeared to curb any alarm in asserting “a month-on-month drop from August to September was expected at end of the football transfer window, which is always one of our busiest times”.
On the other end of spectrum, The Guardian enjoyed a 11.28 per cent increase in daily average traffic in September, while the Independent’s figures jumped 10.32 per cent in the same period. The increase for the pair is being attributed to its content reporting on running water on Mars and the super blood moon