The Daily Mail was established in 1896 by Alfred Harmsworth. It is the leading national newspaper of the Associated Newspaper group and has the 12th highest circulation in the world. It has been said that it sells more than 2 million copies per issue giving it one of the largest English Language daily circulations. www.dailymail.co.uk or Mail Online is the online presence of the Daily Mail newspaper. This national tabloid offers the latest local and international news, sporting updates, entertainment and horoscopes.

The Daily Mail as well as their online counterpart Mail Online focuses to a large degree on the sensational and local aspects of news, entertainment, sports, heath, travel, money and lifestyle. The paper appeals to all demographic groups but largely to the middle and lower income groups. The stories have high entertainment value and are presented with their target markets tastes in mind.

It’s no wonder at all that Mail Online ranks no.1 for tabloid news sites in the United Kingdom. Everyone loves reading a tabloid and Mail Online does tabloid news beautifully. Their pages are packed with excitement and sensation minus the smut. The home page makes use of a white background which is quite common with news websites. Text is a combination of blue and black font colours. Active headline links change to red when your cursor passes over them ensuring that the user selects the story they wish to read.

Whilst blue and black font colours continue throughout the website, support colours change per category. Bright and playful colours such as pink, purple, blue and orange have been used for categories other than news. Colours are used quite imaginatively on the Mail Online website to denote the different categories. Each page has many small attractive images. The images are of interesting and beautiful people and have been used to create a glamorous atmosphere. In-fact it seems that only attractive images have been selected making the page very pleasant to view, particularly in comparison with the usual news sites. News Online have successfully created an upbeat vibe which I am sure attracts many visitors.

Navigation is easy enough. The Mail Online logo is an active link. It is present on every page and will direct a user back to the home page at any time. Navigation is simplified through the use of search and advanced search features. The page is rather long and requires the user to scroll quite far down to see the entire page. Two rows of menus appear at the top of the page. The first menu is for news categories such as news, sport, TV & Showbiz etc. The second menu changes depending on the page which the user is currently browsing.

In terms of Interactivity the site includes a number of interesting features such as sudoku, jigsaw puzzles, spot the difference and other games. There are also a number of debate boards for interactive conversation and comment.

Viral marketing features for registered users include newsletters, RSS feeds, exclusive user competitions, message boards, celebrity chats, email newsletters and personalised horoscopes to name a few.

www.dailymail.co.uk has no broken links and no HTML errors, they also have zero meta tag warnings. The loading time is slow at 5.2 seconds, however slow loading times are quite usual for sites with large amounts of content and complicated link structures. The site ranks no. 1 in the category top regional (Europe - United Kingdom) news and media, newspapers. Their search engine inclusion is 475 000, this tells you that the site has been indexed by the various search engines and the number of times it has been referenced within the search engine.

The sites Alexa traffic rank is 491, the lowest in their category. The lower a websites Alexa traffic rank the more traffic they are expected to receive. This is consistent with their no. 1 ranking and is largely attributable to their high link popularity. Six thousand two hundred and ninety three (6293) sites link to Mail Online and their link popularity score is over 1 million.

The Daily Mail is an established brand. With over 100 years in the media business and an impressive performance record it stands to reason that, provided they avoid any blatant mistakes, their website will deliver superb results. And it does. They have covered all bases, making excellent use of website design and Internet marketing techniques. Overall, Mail Online provides mostly news, gossip, pictures and entertainment. The sensational nature of the content has the strongest draw for visitors, proving once again that content is king.