If you’ve enjoyed The Spectator’s website this year, you’re in good company. Some 22 million have visited our website this year, a record high, and they have read 70 million articles between them. As the below graph shows, this is another record.
The odd thing is that we did not, this year, set out to increase traffic. On the contrary, we have tightened our metered paywall. We offer only a few free articles every month before asking people to subscribe to read more. We judge online success not so much by the traffic total (a figure grossly inflated by one-off visitors) but by new subscriptions. Our aim is quite simple: to grow our family of subscribers and to serve them as well as we can. So while it’s gratifying to see traffic rise, we’re mindful of how easily these traffic figures can be distorted by a few articles that go viral.
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