ABC hits the spot 100,000 times a week

ONLY a few months after winning a national award, the ABC’s Perth website has broken through the 100,000 visits per week mark.

ABC WA manager of local radio Steve Altham said that, as well as this figure – the best for any ABC website in the country, including those in Sydney and Melbourne – four of the ABC’s six regional websites were consistently in the top 10 of the non-capital city-based websites. The Kimberley site was the top regional site in the country.

“We’re fairly pleased with it because we’ve taken a fairly commercial approach to it to try to do something that people want to go into,” Mr Altham said.

“There’s no secret about websites – it’s only ever two things, content and promotion.”

He said the local site’s visit results were particularly pleasing because they were definite figures, unlike radio ratings, which tended to be variable from week to week.

“We’re working strongly on the online capacity because, as with people who read WA Business News, the people who listen to the ABC tend to be at the more intelligent end of the spectrum, and there’s a fairly high computer penetration [among them], Mr Altham said.

He said the ABC in Perth was eager to build upon its success, and to that end would try to find out more specific information about who its visitors were and why they visited the site. Setting up website-based competitions and a regular-listener club were two ways to achieve this.

Mr Altham was full of praise for Sarah Knight, who he said had done a “brilliant job” in her work with the site, as well as other ABC staff.