Retooled WSJ site soaring

Marcelo Duran of Newspapers & Technology writes about The Wall Street Journal‘s redesigned Web site, which has boosted the paper’s online readership and traffic.

Duran writes, “WSJ.com has been a consistent online powerhouse, with visitor traffic more than doubling since 2006, to 22 million, according to Omniture.

“But traffic spiked to new highs after the site’s new design was unveiled.

“That day, McLeod said, more than 2 million people visited the site and traffic has continued to grow.

“‘While the site has doubled its audience in the last year, we launched the (new) site before the markets went crazy,’ he said. ‘Ideally you want to launch a new site on a quiet news day but what happened was the largest traffic day in history.’

“Attracting readers that September Tuesday: The fallout from a 500-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and fears that other investment banks and insurance companies would fail.”

Read more here.