Which Local News Channel Boasts The Most Popular Website?

With viewership statistics for local news channels being rare to find at best, I thought I would look at the popularity of each of the local news channels' websites, the next best metric that is actually available.

All of South Africa's three general news channels, and the two business channels, maintain their own news websites that compete nit only with each other, but also other online-only brands of news, along with social media.

So, which South African news channel has the most popular website?

5. ann7.com
In a distant fifth place, ANN7's (DStv 405) website ranks as the 11 784th most popular website in South Africa (692,277 globally).

The average visitor to the website spends only 1 minute, 59 seconds on the website, averaging 1.8 per visitor.

The website's bounce rate, which measures the percentage of visitors that leave the website after only looking at the homepage is 57.1%

Like its television counterpart, the online version of ANN7 also barely features any advertisements. But for some reason the website still feels quite cluttered and unorganised.

92% of the website's traffic originates from South Africa.


It is worth noting that ANN7's website is also by far the youngest of any of the websites listed at slightly more than a year. Even though the SABC News channel is just a few weeks older than it, SABC News has had an online platform for a long time before laucnhing the SABC News channel.

Ann7 is one of three local news sites that make their tv feed available for free at their own site.



4. businessdaytv.co.za
In fourth place is the official website of Business Day TV (DStv 412), which is the 1 487th most popular website overall in South Africa (339 606 globally).

Like Business Day TV is the tv counterpart to the nationally-distributed Business Day newspaper, bussinessdaytv.co.za is the sister of businessdayonline.co.za, the actual website of the newspaper, while businessdaytv.co.za focuses more on the television channel, including videos and a free live feed of the tv channel, along with some news, though not as extensive as Business Day Online.

Though its visitor figure is lower than most other websites on the list, its visitors are undoubtedly the most satisfied (or most dedicated), with its bounce rate of 28.6%, 8 average page views per visitor and 9:58 minutes spent online by the average visitor, all of which are much greater than any other website listed here. Their online team must be doing something right.

Its visitor percentage from South Africa is also much higher than the rest, with 99.3% of visitors originating from SA.



3. cnbcafrica.com
Though its South African rank of 1759th is worse than BDTV, the website of CNBC Africa (DStv410) ranks much higher when one looks at the global rank of 76,728th. This odd situation of being more popular internationally than domestically is due to a relatively small 34.1% of visitors from South Africa (much smaller than the rest), with the next most popular countries being Nigeria (28.1%), the US (8.4%) and Kenya (6.4%)

This mix is proof that CNBC Africa is truly a pan african news organisation and really covers news that interest people outside of South Africa (unlike other news channels that have the word "Africa" in their name but then their reporters in the Rest of Africa are doing reports on Twitter because for some reason they get so little airtime).

"cnbc live" was the second most searched for term that drove traffic to the site (and could also be why the channel is so popular in the US) as it has a live feed of the channel available for free to anyone, whereas in the US people would have to verify their pay tv subscription before being given access to the live feed. (CNBC Africa boasts quite a bit of daily live content from its international counterpart).

The channel' s bounce rate is 51.8%, daily viewers visit an average of 2.01 pages per visit and spend an average of 3:08 minutes on the website.






2. sabcnews.com

In second place is none other than the news website of the public broadcaster. Overall, it ranks as the 274th most popular website in SA (40 118 globally).

It boasts the highest bounce rate of any website on this list with 59.9%, the average visitor spends 2:14 minutes on the site, with the average visitor visiting 1.56 pages.

87.3% of visitors are from South Africa, with the US, India, the UK and Germany rounding out the top 5, respectively.

 Overall, I must say the SABC's news website is much cleaner than any other website on the list, and also quite colourful but not overdone. Whoever does the website for the organisation is doing a good job at it.

The SABC also maintains a very strong presence on Youtube and the stats listed here exclude stats for the organisation's individual channels' official websites or radio stations.



1. enca.com
It is not a surprise that the website of South Africa's most watched news channel, eNCA (DStv 403) is also the most visited website of any local news channel.

It ranks as the 247th most popular website overall in SA (29 370 globally).

The channel's bounce rate (hope you still remember what that is) is 50.1%, with the average visitor spending 3:29 minutes on the site, visiting 1.97 pages.

Since launching the website with the rebrand from eNews Channel to eNCA, the news organisation has undoubtedly put the most effort into its website in not very long of a time, and it paid off. The channel remained in its Beta phase (the time during which a wedsite or computer programme is tested and tweaked until perfect) for about a year before finally settling with its current design. When they finalised the design, they made a few slightly larger changes to the site, like expanding its Life section (Lifestyle news), in line with high traffic there.

The channel also maintains a strong presence on social media, with multiple Twitter accounts, a popular Youtube channel, popular personalities being quite active online and seamless intergration to their on televison product.

As expected, 79.1% of visitors are from South Africa, followed by the UK (where the channel ceased broadcasting recently) with 4.1% and Nigeria, india and the US rounding off the top five.

The channel is also available for live streaming at livestation.com

Not many surprises on the list, but let's see what happens in a year.
All statistics can be verified using online web measurement services like Alexa. All data is accurate as at December 2, 2014.