Outta site!

It’s official — there are more than a million reasons to read CAmagazine.com.

Web surfers viewed 1.38 million pages of the magazine’s online edition in 2004, with up to 40,000 different visitors to the site each month.

“We hear from people all over the world who use our site — especially the search function — to get information on accounting-related topics,” says Margaret Craig-Bourdin, editor of CAmagazine.com, which won a Best Website award from the Canadian Business Press last year.

Indeed, aside from Canada and the US, which account for 82% of the site’s visitors, 12% come from western Europe, including about 8% from France. “This week alone, I had three e-mails from readers in France,” says Craig-Bourdin.

While English is the top language spoken by the majority (70%) of visitors, a quarter speak French, followed by Chinese, German, Spanish, Dutch and Arabic. Traffic on the site generally peaks at 11 a.m., and Monday is the busiest day of the week. However, the most active day of the year — with nearly 15,000 page views — was Wednesday June 2, when a feature article, “100,000 Strong,” on the proposed CA/CMA merger was posted. Similarly, two feature articles about the merger were among the top entry pages into the site last year.

Readers don’t always use the home page to access these articles; they can link to them directly through a monthly e-mail newsletter, which goes out to 55,000 CAs and other readers. Users who do not already receive the newsletter can subscribe from the CAmagazine.com home page.

So, what was the site’s slowest day of the year? You guessed it — December 25 — but even on Christmas there were 532 page views.