Daily Mail Website analysis

The Daily Mail is Uk's second biggest selling newspaper with a readership of 5.5 million of which over 66 percent is ABC1, hence quite attractive to advertisers. Over the years the Mail has established itself as a rabidly conservative newspaper targeted notably to women hence gaining the reputation of a newspaper for ‘Stepford wives’*, as said by British newspapers online. Articles tend to be written in one of two tones, either immoderate praise of the lifestyles of middle-class role models, or (more usually) moral outrage at the ever-increasing wickedness and instability of the modern world. Despite its keen traditionalistic views and disregard towards modernity the Daily Mail has managed to create a web site which is interactive as well as user-friendly and graphically interesting.

Opening the Mail online three items are immediately brought forward: obviously the front page issue which is updated regularly during the day, next to it a show-biz/ celeb slideshow and a sidebar entitled "Femail Today" focusing specifically on issues concerning women, which reveals to be a quite successful strategy, particularly online where, presently, women represent a bigger traffic than men. The reader comments facility, on every article, allows editor in chief Paul Dacre and his colleagues to monitor feedback on stories. The articles in the Mail, due to their provocative angle, tend to foster the readers’ sensibility regarding the issue in the article making this facility extremely relevant to readers and their interaction with the website*stories have up to 300 comments*.

The website tries to target a broader audience than the newspaper by adding or deepening feature sections, such as the sport one. Ultimately it gives a sense of intimacy with the You Mag section, where the readers and their lives are the main topics, as well as the possibility to customize the site by choosing your own 50 top stories. Over all the Mail online is a competitive website which caters very well for its audience and although its traffic is not as much as substantial as other newspaper websites, such as The Guardian online, it significantly overtakes most of the competitors economically speaking due to the impressive handling of the online advertisement.

*Fun fact: British newspapers online have carried that description of the Daily Mail ever since the site first appeared on the Web in 2002. On 4 May 2007 the Mail’s “Femail” section for women carried an article under this headline: “I became a Stepford wife and saved my marriage”. You couldn’t make it up. Let’s face it, with the Mail you don’t have to.