Marks & Spencer is extending its click & collect hours amid “ambitious” plans to boost its online fashion sales.
Click & collect orders made up until 11pm will now be available for next-day collection as the retailer aims to cash in on “pre-bedtime” spikes in visitors to its site.
M&S, which is currently undergoing a major operations transformation away from physical stores and towards its ecommerce offering, plans to achieve 30 per cent of its sales through its website by 2022.
This latest move, which has been trialled with select consumers since the start of the year, aims to cater to the hundreds of thousands of shoppers who place orders on its website between 10pm and 11pm every week.
According to M&S its website received 9 million visitors per week, with visits spiking in “pre-bedtime” hours between 7pm and 10pm, with around five per cent shopping between 10pm and 11pm.
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Around 50 per cent of online orders are currently collected the next day, and 70 per cent of those are collected within M&S stores.
Collections are most popular around lunchtimes with around 30 per cent of all orders being collected between midday and 2pm, with another spike seen around 5pm.
“M&S is changing and we’ve got an ambitious target to have one third of our clothing sales online by 2022, to do this we must improve how we serve our increasingly busy customers,” head of M&S.com Simon Wood said.
“Our free click & collect service is already incredibly popular and in the last 12 months we’ve made it even more convenient by adding pick-up points at our railway station stores and other smaller store locations.
“The latest improvement will enable thousands more customers to benefit from the service – by catering for that pre-bedtime browse and shop window between 10pm and 11pm.”
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