Seven West Media has 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 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 (UA) – 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).
Seven West Media head of digital Dan Stinton said: “We’ve grown our digital audience and revenue substantially in the last few years by making our content available wherever our audience wants it – be it via the website, mobile app, social channels, podcasts or smart speakers – and there is a lot more to come. This website update is the outcome of continued investment in Seven West Media’s digital strategy.”