Marks & Spencer To Launch Major Internet Push Next Month

You’d be forgiven for thinking Marks & Spencer’s new website looks like a million dollars. Actually, it’s a £150 million, to be precise.

That was the cost of the relaunch - so was it worth it? Broadly speaking, the consensus is in the affirmative. Could it have been done for less money? Very probably. But through three years, a reasonable amount of pain and a lot of customers who will always be disappointed when things are less than perfect, we are finally more or less there.

And given the massive overhaul and the split from its previous partner Amazon you could forgive M&S for the various teething problems which have emerged.

The past six or seven weeks since the relaunch have been littered with issues - some large like the crash during launch week and some small: customers having to re-log their details, some browsers not working too well with some devices, glitches that meant customers inexplicably reverted back to the homepage.

Then, late last month, one of the key architects behind the site Darrell Stein left the company in a surprise move that left everyone speculating just how bruised he was with the experience.

But the company is hoping to shrug off those teething problems in a few weeks time. February was regarded by the company as a ‘soft’ launch. Our sources tell us that the company aims to conduct a major marketing push for the the website beginning May 1 that will seek to prove the worth of all its labours.

Given the amount of money it seems to have made available for the project so far, let’s assume that it will not be short of funds to promote the push. Expect blanked coverage in the press, interviews with its e-commerce executive Laura Wade-Gery and lots of adverts and promotional activity. Not signed up yet - might be best to wait until then.

Next week Marks & Spencer will release its latest trading figures and within that will break out online trading. We suspect things will have slowed down a little from the stellar growth the site was seeing last year.

But, barring any major problems, that will all change next month. The power behind the site should be enough to finally give Next and John Lewis a few problems and will leave some of its other rivals looking very shoddy indeed.