Fortune.com’s traffic up 27.5 percent since launch

Fortune.com, which launched in June after nearly a decade of the business magazine placing its content on CNNMoney.com, has seen its traffic increase by more than 25 percent in its first four months online.

The site recorded 10.2 million unique visitors and 39.5 million page views in September, according to Omniture. That’s up 27.5 percent from the 8 million unique visitors it had in June. Page views are up 21.2 percent from the 32.6 million page views in June.

In addition, the site had more than 273,000 video streams in September, the highest amount since the launch. Last week, the site hit a record traffic day of more than 1 million unique visitors during its Most Powerful Women conference, which now has its own page on Fortune.com.

“I think it’s two things,” said Alan Murray, who become editor in chief of Fortune earlier this year. “One is the reason I came here in the first place, which is good brands have value in the digital world. People need some help sorting through the noise, and one of the ways they do that is by gravitating toward good brands. The second thing is that you have to have all of the right moves, and I think we have been doing that.”

Murray noted that Fortune.com has seen 100 percent growth in referrals to its content through social media in September.

To keep the growth going, Murray said that Fortune.com plans to launch additional sections of its website. It plans to launch a leadership section later this week, and has others in the works.

“Once you have an audience, you have to keep them,” said Murray in a telephone conversation with Talking Biz News. “How do you make them loyal readers?”

The leadership section, said Murray, will be for “anyone who wants to be successful in business and how they get ahead. It’s content that appeals to that. It will be a combination of staff-written stories and contributor content.”

Murray declined to disclose any projections for Fortune.com traffic other than to say he wants it to be “much bigger than we are now.”

Fortune and Money, both part of Time Inc., rolled out their own websites in June after the magazine business was spun off from Time Warner’s cable and other operations. Fortune hired two dozen journalists to work on the site, which is staffed from 2 a.m. to 9 p.m. EST each day.