If it weren't for the Coronavirus tragedy that sows fear and sadness in all of us, March 2020 would be a month to frame for FIRSTonline. Our web journal has never been read so much, despite the fact that it is not a generalist publication but specialized in economic and financial information.
In March FIRSTonline has reached an all-time high in contacts, breaking all previous records, both in terms of direct and aggregate views and unique users.
Direct visits to the FIRSTonline website, which is the main publication of the independent company AL Iniziative Editoriali, were, according to Google Analytics surveys, 3 million and 898.522 with an increase compared to February (3 million and 373.307) of 525.215 units, equal to over 11 percent in a single month.
In aggregate terms (FIRSTonline + Facebook page + FIRSTonline content on the Microsoft Italy portal, www.msn.it) the views/month for the first time exceeded, and by far, the magical threshold of 4 million, reaching 4 million and 738.025 with an increase over February of 768 thousand units, equal to just under 20 per cent.
Of the total aggregate number of views of FIRSTonline content distributed on the various platforms, direct visits to the site were – as mentioned – 3 million and 898.522, those to our Facebook page were 152.131 and those on the Msn.it pages totaled reached 687.372 units.
On average, it can be said that 152 people read the FIRSTonline services every day, with a leap of over 800 compared to the daily average for the month of February.
Significant increase too unique users who for the first time exceed one million units and reach 1 million and 356.329 units.
How to evaluate an audience growth as important as that of March? Certainly the Coronavirus effect was also felt on FIRSTonline, if we only consider that around 270 visits were collected by the service, widely promoted by Google, on the use of masks. But there are two other considerations that deserve to be made.
The first concerns theat the speed of adaptation that a specialist and non-generalist magazine like FIRSTonline demonstrates in the face of the evolution of the facts, even when - as in the case of the pandemic - they have neither an economic nor a financial origin. And to know how to do it without distorting its nature, that is, not losing sight of the economic, financial, stock market, industrial and social effects of the Coronavirus and selecting the news in order to offer readers an updated, critical but not distracting key to reading.
The second consideration is that, without taking anything away from the Coranavirus effect, the upward trend of FIRSTonline actually started from mid-autumn 2019 confirming the growing appreciation that readers show for an original format of economic and financial information that combines service journalism with in-depth analysis and commentary and which makes quality, reliability, independence and creativity its own flags.
And it is precisely to the readers but also to the subscribers and advertisers and naturally to the whole journalistic and technical team that thanks go to FIRSTonline, which, data in hand, has now established itself as the fifth Italian economics and finance site.
