John Smith’s website has been recognised as one of the UK’s Top 500 Retail websites in the prestigious and authoritative InternetRetailing annual survey. John Smith’s joins other well-known brands including WH Smith and Waterstones in this research based survey that recognises “leading ecommerce and cross-channel” retailers.

Commenting on this recognition, Peter Gray, CEO and Chairman of JS Group, said:

This is a tremendous accolade and reflects the effort and emphasis we have placed on providing students with a great online experience. At John Smith’s, our ecommerce sales now make up nearly 30% of our overall sales and that percentage is set to increase. This is driven in part by the evolving purchasing habits of students and in part by the great array of goods and services we can offer online.

Developing this theme, David Marshall, JS Group Commercial Director, added:

We have spent the past couple of years designing and developing our online student stores so that they can deliver all the resources students need to be successful. We offer a great range of books but also a comprehensive range of laptops and tablets, stationery, art materials, online courses, office equipment, sports equipment, bikes, professional journal subscriptions, the list goes on. Working with a carefully selected group of partner suppliers such as Office Depot, we can offer students a much greater choice than we can do within our on campus stores. We have been pleased with the results and our ecommerce sales have grown by 78% over the past two years since we commenced this extended ecommerce strategy. We are also working with other partners interested in the UK Higher Education market by developing directly branded web offerings, be that for other independent book retailers, publishers directly or other non-book specialists with an interest in the sector.