Daily Mail plots aggressive online growth with new site

Mail Online has launched a beta version of its new Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday website as part of its aggressive plans for growth. As part of the redesign, the site is ramping up its showbiz and women’s sections.

The beta site, beta.dailymail.co.uk went live this afternoon (April 16) and it is currently running in conjunction with its old website www.dailymail.co.uk.

Martin Clarke, editorial director of Mail Online, says 90% of its content is already available on the beta site and hopes to finalise the complete changeover within weeks.

The redesigned site will now be branded Mail Online on the homepage, replacing the Daily Mail masthead. The changes also means there is more advertising inventory.

Clarke says it will be able to offer advertisers “entirely new shapes” beyond the skyscrapers, banners and multiple purpose units (MPU) currently on its old site. Also, on the pages featuring articles, it has moved skyscrapers from the right to the left hand side, pushing the MPU up higher – following the logic that people read from the left to the right.

“What we’ve done is looked at the aspects about our old site that worked and the bits that didn’t. We’ve accentuated the aspects we know worked. The ‘Femail’ and showbiz sections are bigger and brighter – more like a magazine,” Clarke says.

Mail Online is the second biggest newspaper website in the UK behind the guardian.co.uk. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations electronic figures, it attracted over 17 million visitors in February this year, not far behind guardian.co.uk’s 19.5 million.

“We’ve been the fastest growing website for the last two years. We’ve built this site very ruthlessly and it has been ruthlessly dictated by the lessons we’ve learnt.”

He says at this stage there are no plans for marketing activity. “We’re 200% up year on year and we’ve not spent a penny on marketing or search, so we haven’t decided.”