EVENING News readers flocking to its Worcestershire website have helped boost page visits by a staggering 80 per cent.

Thisisworcestershire website has attracted 1,102,887 page visits already this year compared to a total of 864,270 last year.

The Evening News website, Thisisworcester, attracted the largest number of page visits out of the seven newspapers owned by Newsquest in the county, with 69,560.

Kidderminster attracted 15,742 and Bromsgrove 13,317.

Neighbouring Herefordshire, with two websites devoted to Hereford and Ledbury attracted 403,539 page visits.

Meanwhile, the Fish4 classified advertisements network, which Newsquest helped to found, has proved a resounding success, serving a total of 68,405, 843.

Success

Out of this, 26,181,023 pages were devoted to Fish4Jobs and 17,299,374 to Fish4homes.

Lindsay O'Hara, Newsquest Midlands South development manager for digital media, said Worcester's success was partly based on a daily update of news and sports.

He said readers from as far as Australia and New Zealand regularly went online to the Worcester pages.

"In the long-term we hope we will be able to update the site several times per day, rather than just once at the moment," he said.

"As well as updating the news and sport continually, in the future we're hoping to have more photographs online and develop leisure and tourism in a big way."

Mr O'Hara said community organisations and charities will also be encouraged to take advantage of Communigate, a system allowing them to create their own internet sites free of charge.