Customers of Domino’s Pizza confirmed their preference for buying online and through mobile devices, the company’s latest financial results suggested.
Online sales accounted for 61.5% of Domino’s UK deliveries after a year that saw ecommerce sales rise by 28.2% to £338.0m in the year to December 29. Almost a third (30.9%) of orders were placed via a mobile device- up from 19.7% at the same time last year.
The full-year results from Domino’s Pizza UK and Ireland came on the same day as the IMRG Capgemini Quarterly Benchmarking Study showed that one in every three UK online sales was now made via a mobile device. And of the 32% of sales made using mobile, 26% come from tablets and 6% from smartphones (although smartphone growth is faster).
Domino’s reported overall sales up by 14% to £668.8m, with like-for-like UK sales up by 7%. Group profit before tax rose by 1.9% to £47.6m. When overseas territories, Germany and Switzerland, were taken out of the equation, pre-tax profits were up by 11.6% at £55.2m. In Germany a strategy of fast expansion meant the company suffered “unacceptably high losses, including large impairments of assets in Germany” amounting to £7m.
Chairman Stephen Hemsley said like-for-like sales growth of 7% was “surely one of the strongest growth stories on the UK high street. This strong performance was driven by a broad blend of activities including: investment into digital sales, smart use of SMS marketing, strong new product development and targeted incentives for franchisees to accelerate their order counts.”
The company said that it had been “at the vanguard” of the consumer move to new ways of buying and to new devices, such as smartphones and tablets, that they use to buy. The company also promotes its products over social media, and now has 912,000 Facebook fans and 173,000 Twitter followers.
Over the last year Domino’s upgraded its mobile apps and is currently rolling out a new look to its website.
