Designed to complement the print title, The People’s Friend website hosts interviews with the magazine’s fiction and regular features writers, recipes and travel articles, a ‘Meet the Team’ section and blogs from The People’s Friend Fiction Editor Shirley Blair and popular travel writer Willie Shand (‘Willie’s View’). The website will also feature competitions, a behind-the-scenes glimpse into putting together the magazine's food and craft pages from Cookery Editor Marion McGivern and Knitting Editor Liz O'Rourke, and the opportunity to sign up to receive a regular newsletter from the "Friend" team.
The People’s Friend Editor-in-Chief Angela Gilchrist said, “Our new website has been designed as the perfect complement to the "Friend", introducing readers to the people who put their magazine together every week, and building on the sense of community and friendship that the "Friend" engenders. It's a fun, welcoming place to be, and we hope people will enjoy spending time in the company of friends."
The website has been designed specifically for tablet use and is the first DC Thomson website to have been created in this way. Research shows that over 50% of tablet users are women with a significantly increasing percentage of female over-50s using tablets on a daily basis, say the publishers.
Pageviews on the website are up 161% with popular pages including the Fiction pages and Fiction Blog. Traffic from social sites has also increased significantly particularly from Facebook.
