Two Trinity Mirror regional websites saw large increases in their online visitors in January, according to the latest figures.

The websites of the Liverpool Echo and the Manchester Evening News were both included for the first time in the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s monthly digital traffic report, which mainly looks at national newspapers.

At the Echo, the monthly unique browsers in January increased by 39pc to just over 3m, up from 2.2m for December.

And at the MEN, the monthly figure increased by 24pc to 4.3m, compared to the previous month’s figure of 3.5m.

The daily average unique browsers for the Echo was 192,457 and at the MEN this was 256,444.

For the printed editions of the titles, the Echo’s average circulation in January was 68,395, down 2.5pc month-on-month, while at the MEN, its print circulation was 69,772 – up 0.6pc compared to December’s figure.