It's the start of a new year, which means it's time to look forward and reflect on the past 12 months.

Looking back over the past year, 2005 was fantastic for the News Shopper website.

We achieved our best ever audience figures, breaking through the four-million mark for page impressions and the 500,000 barrier for unique users.

The second of these milestones really made me stop and think more than half a million people visited News Shopper's site during the year pretty impressive for a local weekly newspaper site I think.

If any of our bloggers or other contributors ever think their material is not being read by anyone, think again!

It has to be said that generating good web traffic is partly down to luck. For example, it's impossible to know how many people are going to enter our competitions or which news stories are going to attract the most interest. We probably had half a dozen or so stories during 2005 which for one reason or another attracted many more views than we would usually expect for our stories. Often our stories get linked to from other websites around the world - commonly they are American sites specialising in quirky news stories - and this gives our traffic a massive boost.

This said, I would say News Shopper's online success is perhaps 10 per cent luck. The other 90 per cent is a combination of hard work from the whole team here and the quality of the content we provide on our site.

Several major new sections were introduced last year, including News Blogger, and these have all contributed to our readership and added to our core function of providing the latest news, sport, leisure and local information.

Looking ahead, 2006 is going to be another busy year on News Shopper's site and there will be various new initiatives.

The first of these is called Your Shopper and you should see it in place on the site within the next few weeks.

It will be News Shopper's first dabble with so-called citizen journalism', something which not many local newspapers have so far done.

It will be a place for people to get their news, views and pictures published. As well as being a major step forward with our online content and the way we present it, this section will also see a technological advance as people will be able to submit messages and photos through their mobile phones.

I can reveal now that News Blogger will be moving into the new Your Shopper section as blogging will be an important part of the new initiative. News Blogger will be renamed Your Blogs, but will take the same format as now.

Let me invite you now, as you read this blog from me, to be one of the first people to contribute to Your Shopper. If you have any news stories or pictures you would like to see published, or if you have any comments on topical issues, send them to me by email to sbull@london.newsquest.co.uk. Just mark your email Your Shopper.

As always, your suggestions, questions and comments on News Shopper's website are welcome. You can email me at the above address.