Document reveals traffic impact, post-GO4 design

Gannett Blog readers have said the switch to the GO4 website template last spring sent traffic tumbling for some newspapers.

So, you can imagine my interest in a company document just sent to me, showing that traffic actually rose a fraction across the papers, two months after the new design roll out was mostly completed.

Now, the data covers just one month -- July. I wish it were more current. Still, it offers a revealing snapshot of how the community newspaper division's websites performed after the new template's high-profile roll out.

The document shows that page views across the 84 community papers rose 0.24%, to a combined 576.9 million vs. 575.5 million in July 2007. In two other big divisions, the document shows, results varied widely:

• USA Today: Page views rose 10.1%, to 196.2 million, from 178.2 million
• Broadcasting division: Page views fell 0.2% to 119.3 million, from 119.6 million

To be sure, these are just snapshots of a single month. Plus, they're three months old. If I had more current data, I'd certainly work with it. Nonetheless, my gut instinct is to say these figures across the community papers aren't bad, for several reasons:

Several papers didn't make the switch until May, so their readers were still pissed off by July -- when this data was gathered; readers' initial reaction to any change is usually negative. Plus, there's simply more competition for readers today than there was in July 2007. For the community papers to stay even is itself an accomplishment, no?

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[Image: today's Reno Gazette-Journal front page, Newseum. It's one of the 84 dailies in the community newspaper division]