Department store John Lewis has hit annual web sales of £1 billion a year ahead of expectations after launching a new online platform, it has been announced today.
Building “a foundation for future online growth”, the retailer invested nearly £40 million on its new site over the course of three years in a bid to drive its customer-focused omnichannel strategy.
At the start of the year, John Lewis announced the appointment of Collect Plus chief Mark Lewis as its first Online Director to develop the chain‘s omnichannel offering and Lewis today welcomed the solid sales results.
“Passing the £1 billion milestone almost an entire year ahead of schedule is a fantastic achievement for us, and a reflection of how central online shopping has become to our customers.
“We have a leading omnichannel strategy which our customers love, but to continue to deliver the service our customers want, we need a website which will serve us as well as the old one did, and maintain our position as a leading innovator in online retailing.”
Featuring new functionality in the hopes of driving innovation, the new site features an enhanced wishlist function and more content and the retailer promised enhanced customer-focused functionality in the near future.
Similarly, John Lewis plans to launch a new mobile app later this year as m-commerce sales now account for over a quarter of traffic to its website after a re-vamp of its mobile offer aligned creative design with the main site.
Paul Colby, IT Director at John Lewis, noted that online sales at the chain had risen 40 per cent in 2012 as customer demand continued to grow.
“The billion-pound success of johnlewis.com is a reflection of our strategy to put the customer at the heart of our online operations,” Colby added.
“Early testing at every stage of the build, and inviting over three million customers to use our beta site before full launch, has resulted in what we believe will be an outstanding experience and journey for customers.
“We have designed the new site to incorporate the best features of our previous site making it not only easy and intuitive to use, but inspiring to shop.”
