Our redesigned website launched on Feb. 15, and the results so far are very gratifying.
As expected, we had a spike in traffic during the first 48 hours, as readers checked out the new design. But more important, traffic since then has remained significantly above pre-launch levels.
For the two weeks from Feb. 17 to March 1, visits by Minnesotans have run 10 to 20 percent above comparable periods earlier in 2012. And the average Minnesota visitor is looking at about 15 percent more pages per visit.
We’ve also seen a jump in mobile visits in response to our adaptive design that makes the site look a lot better on smartphones and tablets. Before we launched, about 12 percent of all our visits were on mobile platforms; now it’s 14 percent and growing.
And here is one final number that speaks to our readers’ experience: the average page load time on the site is now under 4 seconds, significantly less than half what it used to be.
In addition to the encouraging traffic numbers, we’ve received very helpful feedback from our readers — both positive and critical. Our commenters spoke up quickly that they didn’t like the new pagination for comments, or scrolling from newest to oldest entries; we were able to make those changes quickly and reach a happy middle ground. In response to reader feedback, we’ve also added a link on the homepage to the previous edition of the Glean.
We will continue to work on a number of projects in the coming months, including importing the two weeks of comments that weren’t migrated, adding navigation features like breadcrumbs, creating a better way to share stories and more. As always, we welcome your feedback at redesign@minnpost.com.