On Christmas Day, three quarters of all traffic to John Lewis site came from mobile phones and tablets.

John Lewis predicted back in October that mobile traffic would overtake desktop at 5pm on the day – which David Murphy nominated as his biggest story of the year – but it actually beat its expectations by quite a wide margin.

Last Christmas, by comparison, mobile made up just under 50 per cent of traffic.

“The shift to mobile devices for online shopping has been confirmed but the in-store sale is well and truly thriving, as shown by the record first day for Clearance in our shops on 27 December,” said Andy Street, managing director of John Lewis. “With new highs in branches as well as for johnlewis.com, this has been a genuine omnichannel Christmas.”

This was announced as part of John Lewis financial results for the five week period to 28 December 2013. The retailer saw a 7.3 per cent year-on-year increase in sales, reaching £734m – but its worth noting that while bricks-and-mortar sales rose by just 1.2 per cent, online sales jumped 22.6 per cent.