Selfridges in £40 million website revamp

Biggest single investment in Selfridges.com since website launch

(Getty)

Selfridges is the latest upmarket department store to step up its online investment in the face of global competition.

Selfridges is to invest £40m on its website to “future-proof its multichannel business” – the biggest single investment in Selfridges.com since it launched.

It plans to improve the usability of the site from smartphones and tablets and will unveil a new site tomorrow with further improvements to follow. It will add 100 new brands to the online shop including Victoria Beckham, Bruno Cucinelli and Burberry.

Earlier this month US department store group Neiman Marcus –which also owns Bergdorf Goodman - bought online designer fashion retailer mytheresa.com to bolster its online know-how.

UK department store Harvey Nichols will improve its website under new boss Stacey Cartwright.

Selfridges said it is the “UK leader of its category with the highest number of weekly website visits” with more than 1 million visits a week which it claims is nearly 30 per cent more than its nearest “premium online department store competitor.”

Selfridges said that more than 80 per cent of the brands and products available in its shops are now also sold online.

Sales have more than doubled year on year since it first launched its online shop in 2010 and more than a quarter of its business is now from customers outside the UK - with shoppers from Hong Kong, China, the US, Australia, Singapore and France the most frequent.