Two thirds (66%) of visits to the Shoe Zone website came from mobile devices in its latest financial year, the value shoe company said as it reported full-year results today. That’s up from 56% in the previous year.
Online traffic as a whole, said the company, outpaced Mintel ecommerce growth expectations of 13.9% for 2015. Shoe Zone launched a responsive website during the year, and also started selling in more than 30 new markets through the Amazon and eBay marketplaces. Shoe Zone said that its 200 web exclusive products accounted for 13.4% of shoezone.com sales, and it is now increasing that range to 275 each season to meet what it said was increasing demand for higher priced products.
Overall, revenue of £166.8m in the year to October 3 2015 was down by 3.5% compared to the previous year, while pre-tax profits were down by 3.4% at £10.1m, from £10.5m last time.
Chief executive Anthony Smith said that the company had achieved a “solid performance” in a difficult year for the footwear industry, and now plans to grow its store estate through new stores by testing a new big box format in a trial set to start in August.
“The trial stores will benefit from an extended product range, higher priced footwear and will allow us to benefit from the out of town market,” said Smith. “This trial will create a strong avenue for new growth outside of Shoe Zone’s traditional portfolio.”
