Last November, the Suffolk News-Herald unveiled its new Web site – a site that was designed to be more user-friendly and offer the newspaper an opportunity to grow its online audience.

More than a year later, the results have been overwhelming.

“We have seen extraordinary growth in our online audience over the past few months,” Suffolk News-Herald editor Tim Reeves said. “I believe the main reason for the growth has been readers coming to expect consistent and quality coverage of our hometown — Suffolk.”

In the year ending Oct. 31, a full year since the new site’s launch, more than 700,000 unique visitors have logged on with more than three million pages being viewed.

“That is an outstanding number for a newspaper our size, but that doesn’t tell the whole story,” Reeves said. “The real surprise has been the increase in traffic we have seen over the past three to four months.”

In November of last year, 48,403 unique visitors logged on to www.suffolknewsherald.com. In October 2009, nearly 89,000 unique visitors logged on. That marks an increase of more than 83 percent in just one year.

“I am extremely proud of the work our newsroom — and entire staff — has done in making the site different every day and working to provide regular updates throughout the day when needed,” Reeves said. “Our readers have grown to expect more from our site, and we work every day to ensure they are not disappointed.”

In September, the staff also launched a daily news email that is delivered to nearly 3,000 inboxes each morning.

“That has been an amazing success,” Reeves said. “We have a few emails and calls each day of folks signing up for that free service. That has also help drive more traffic to our site.”

The company’s newest product, Suffolk Living, a quarterly, full-color city and lifestyle magazine, which is set to debut Dec. 1, also has gone online at www.suffolklivingmag.com.

The site ultimately will host a number of stories from the magazine and offer updated information from throughout Suffolk, as well.

“It has been a busy few months, but an exciting few months,” Reeves said. “The entire staff has been involved with each of these new products and has accomplished so much in such a short period of time.”

Those readers wanting to receive the daily news email can email their contact information to dailynews@suffolknewsherald.com. The email newsletter is delivered each morning (Tuesday-Sunday) at 6 a.m.