Condé Nast Britain wrote, on 30 October: Growth in website traffic year on year shows significant gains, including a 100% increase in traffic to Glamour. GQ traffic rose by 93%, Brides by 83%, Condé Nast Traveller by 54%, Vogue by 50%, Easy Living by 43%, Wired by 30%, Tatler by 25%, and House & Garden by 14%.
The social media footprint for the Condé Nast brands continues to grow, rising from a combined total of 753,000 in 2011 to 4.4 million to date in 2013.
“The powerful Condé Nast brands no longer differentiate between print and digital, giving our audiences unlimited access to our content on all platforms and all devices,” remarked Jouning. “Digital innovation is at the heart of our business, and is driving the transition from leading upmarket glossy magazine publisher to leading upmarket cross platform publisher,” he added.
Condé Nast has also analysed site traffic by device. In 2011 86% of traffic to the sites was via desktop, with only 0.2% via tablet and 14% from mobile. In 2013 to date, desktop traffic comprises 58% of the total, compared to 12% via tablet and 30% from mobile.
The responsive design approach pioneered with the reimagining of the Vogue site in 2012 is being rolled out across the portfolio. Optimised for the new wave of retina screens, this design approach ensures the sites look good on small smartphone screens, on the largest of desktop monitors, and all sizes in between. A complimentary Ad Builder service is also offered by Condé Nast to help clients and their design agencies produce responsive ad formats. The brainchild of Pete Miller, Head of Technology and Product Development, and his team, this software provides advertisers with the necessary web toolkit with which to convert their existing assets in to fully functioning, responsive ads that work seamlessly on all screen sizes.
The Condé Nast Digital Studio was unveiled today. This is a natural extension of the existing Custom Solutions Department, to provide multi-platform digital creative solutions for our advertising community.
Jouning commented: “The Digital Studio will provide a design agency style service to clients who require digital support, including the creation of enhanced digital ads for tablet magazine editions, as well as web creative for all devices from desktop down to mobile.”
The Condé Nast Digital Studio is led by Zoe Willis, Sales Director, together with Vanessa Eley, Art Director. The Studio is already up and running, and has completed work for clients including Bentley on GQ, H&M and M&S on Vogue and Cisco and Shell on Wired.
Editorial innovation remains at the heart of progress for the brands digitally. For example, the redesign of the Vogue Fashion Show Section has resulted in Pages Per Visit increasing from 27 to 35. Mobile traffic to this section has risen by 84% proving beyond doubt that users like the new Show experience on mobile.
The introduction of a new article template on Wired has dramatically improved the user experience in terms of long form content consumption. Since these new templates went live the average time spent on a Wired article has risen from 2 to 3 minutes across all pages on the site. However, our long form articles have performed even more impressively, the Richard Branson Virgin Galactic piece for example, has seen engagement rise from 4 minutes to a staggering 12.5 minutes.
Condé Nast continues to develop its digital editions, with interactive digital editions of Glamour, GQ, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Wired available on Apple Newsstand and Kindle with plans in place to launch on Android in H1 next year. PDF versions of our entire magazine portfolio are currently available on all platforms. Since 2010, Condé Nast digital editions have cumulatively generated 1.2 million digital edition downloads.
As announced in the digital briefing last year, mobile is an ongoing focus for Condé Nast, and in addition to the mobile optimisation of our websites already completed, Wired is due to launch its first monthly digital replica edition built specifically for the iPhone using Adobe Experience Manager technology. iPhone interactive editions for GQ, Glamour and Vanity Fair will follow in Q1 2014.
The Condé Nast Digital Portfolio Update 2013 was held today at The Royal Institution in central London.
