Marks & Spencer’s end of year results have been boosted by a 31 per cent rise in online sales, with more than 3 million visitors a week to the M&S Direct site, an 18 per cent growth in traffic compared to last year.
The retailer M& said its online sales had outperformed the wider online market, which IMRG figures show is growing by 20 per cent a year, and it also claimed a 5.6 per cent share of the online clothing market, according to Kantar Worldpanel figures.
In its financial statement it said: “Over the year we worked on developing our multichannel business, making it even easier and more convenient to shop with M&S. We made a number of enhancements to our website, designed to improve customer experience and encourage more shoppers to complete their transactions, leading to an increase in conversion rates.”
M&S said its Shop Your Way multichannel service was now available in 444 stores, including 151 Simply Food stores. Meanwhile, its mobile site, launched last May, has seen 5.5m visitors, placing more than 59,000 orders. Social media engagement had brought it 295,000 Facebook fans and 26,000 Twitter followers.
“The use of social media is enabling us to engage with our customers and gain further insights into their shopping habits and preferences,” said M&S.
A new ecommerce platform is now being designed to be in place in 2013/14, while the company is working with existing supplier Amazon to grow its existing platform. Laura Wade-Gery, previously of Tesco, joins the company on July 4 as executive director, multichannel ecommerce.
Across the company, group revenues rose by 4.2 per cent to £9.7bn, with a 4 per cent rise in UK revenue to £8.7bn and a 6.1 per cent rise in international sales to £1bn.
Underlying pre-tax profits, before one-off costs, rose by 12.9 per cent in the 52 weeks to April 2 to £714.3m from £632.5m over the same period last year, while pre-tax profits were up by 11 per cent to £780.6m from £702.7m last year.
