One of the websites that fared well in my analysis of the online luxury market was Selfridges. The famous department store’s homepage has recently gone transactional, and this has had a positive impact on its retail ranking in the UK. As the chart below illustrates, it currently ranks 30th within our Shopping and Classifieds category: up from high 30s during most of the last year, and jus below its position during the post-Christmas period, always a busy period for department stores online.

However, it is the average session time data that really illustrates the success of the change. Before it went transactional, the average visitor spent well under three minutes on the Selfridges websites, but this shot up in March and now sites at around four and a half minutes.

But where are all these visitors coming from? As the chart below illustrates, the majority come from areas where Selfridges has actual physical stores: London and the South East (Oxford Street store), the North West (Manchester stores) and the West Midlands (Birmingham store). However, the parts of the UK that experiences the biggest growth in visitors over the last year are the places furthest aware from a Selfridges store: Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Clearly, going transactional has not only encouraged people to spend more time on the site browsing and purchasing, it has also attracted visitors from parts of the UK that can now enjoy the Selfridges experience without having to visit a store.

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