Battle of the homepages heats up - Stuff overtakes Herald
The Auckland-based New Zealand Herald's home page has been knocked from its perch as the No 1 news page in the country by the Wellington-focused Stuff news website.
The stuff.co.nz home page boasted 126,956 average daily unique browsers for the month of July, compared with 120,980 for the nzherald.co.nz homepage, according to Nielson market intelligence.
Over the past 12 months the Stuff homepage had been consistently about 2000 viewers behind the Herald.
The mixed reaction to the Herald’s recent home page redesign may be one factor in the battle for online readers.
APN online multimedia editor Jeremy Rees was unable to comment, but marketing manager Sarah Marshall noted that “We have recently re-launched the homepage, so I guess it’s some sort of learning curve where we’re constantly watching what our readers are doing and getting feedback from our readers.”
The Herald’s total traffic for its entire website remains a nose ahead, with 172,144 average daily viewers compared to Stuff’s 171,023 viewers, but again the trend is tightening up – in Stuff’s favour.
Twelve months ago the Herald’s total average daily unique browsers were around 5000 readers ahead, and in March this year it enjoyed a lead of 12,000 readers.
Nielsen Online New Zealand General Manager Ivan Fuyala denied reports that the Herald had been gaming its numbers in various ways, such as by counting images viewed as a page impression.
While Mr Fuyala admitted that a rival publisher had brought the practice to Nielsen’s attention, he said that “we contacted [the Herald] and they said we’ll change it. I think it was a genuine mistake; they generally are pretty compliant.
“The truth is they’re both competitive and they both do a good job, and they’re both pretty close in terms of traffic.”
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Comments and questions10
It's going to be fascinating to watch this play out over the next few months. The two publishers now have quite philosophically different approaches to their homepage design - the NZH opting for 'a little of everything' versus Stuff's customisable and somewhat less link heavy approach.
Says a lot about the underlying thinking that, while Stuff and the Herald both collect and present the data on what's most popular, most shared etc -- Stuff showcases that community data prominently above the fold, while the NZH buries it down at the very bottom of the page (beyond the reach or engagement of all but the search engines).
Talk to, or talk with? – Fantastic to see clear differentiation beyond the traditional regional biases.
I hate the heralds new layout.
Less is more. I guess that is why Stuff is bouncing back.
seriously... if you want new news you don't go to stuff and you don't go to the herald.
Of course, you don't go to NBR either because Barry's putting up a paywall. Great idea, Baz. Hide the news from readers.
oh well. I'll stick with the NYT thanks.
The stupidity of various corporates to change their packaging/branding/product lines etc, never fails to stagger me. I loath the NZH page as it is now (and hell, no one ever asked me if I wanted change). Trade Me is another and Google with those stupid, suggested search titles that drop down, just drives me nuts. We're all time poor and so these idiots go change something that we're just getting use to using. So damn frustrating. Sheesh!
Once again we read interesting things in NBR you dont see on the main sites. That Herald Friday media writer John someone loves to put the boot in other media. I cant wait to see whether he reports this Friday that the herald is now 2nd place and made a "mistake" in the way it counted traffic. It will be a good test I would say.
Stuff.co has links to North Shore Times advertiser which is a free local paper rarely delivered to many North Shore suburbs. I and many of my widespread friends havn't seen a hard copy in months (wonder why advertisers aren't screaming). At least I can at least see a few real local stories that Herald arent interested in reporting and therefore have Stuff as my default and SMH (Sydney morning herald) as my real newspaper website.
The best link to news is Google. Use the link on the top left of the screen, and it is free unlike NBR
If the NBR isn't free, how are you commenting here? Only niche stories are paid content and oh look! Clearly you're still reading the NBR.
Google doesn't create any news, it just posts links to news other people wrote. Much easier to be free if you don't have to pay to produce your content. But if you like Google news try learning how to use Netvibes, Digg, Reddit, or uh Twitter...
....meaningless headlines. What 'works' in hardcopy fails miserably online.
scoop for real new