British High Street giant Marks & Spencer said online sales surged 22.9 per cent in the past three months as shoppers used its 'click and collect' service.
The rise is faster than the 10.8 per cent reported in the previous three months and will take total multi-channel sales in the year to around £650 million, it is estimated.
The increase helped the company to marginally beat analysts expectations of a 4 per cent drop in clothing and home wares sales. Like-for-like sales in clothing and home dropped 3.8 per cent. Marks & Spencer only offers a small food service online and the vast majority is clothing and home products.
It also said sales from mobile phones grew 70 per cent compared to last year after it improved its mobile site. It said its e-commerce distribution centre will begin to open next month ahead of the relaunch of its entire web platform in a year's time when it separates from Amazon.com.
'Multi-channel sales growth accelerated,' said chief executive Marc Bolland.
Group sales rose 3.1 per cent and total UK sales increased 2.6 per cent after food sales climbed 6.3 per cent. Total like-for-like sales (sales from mature stores open at least a year) increased 0.6 per cent and food sales on that basis increased 4 per cent. Overseas sales grew 7 per cent.
'We are working hard on improving our performance in general merchandise (clothing and home products) and, despite difficult trading conditions, we made progress in our operational execution,' he said.
The company said it held prices during much of the quarter but introduced tactical offers in March as promotional activity across the market intensified.
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