Online sales at John Lewis were up 22% in the week to December 7 - the second week in a row where over a third of all trade went through its website.
Following from the previous record-breaking week, which included Black Friday on November 29, last week's sales included Cyber Sunday on December 1 - "marking one of the busiest days of the year for johnlewis.com", according to the company.

Traffic to the site was up 29% compared with the same day last year and visits to the site spiked at 8pm, followed by peak sales at 9pm, and mobile and tablet users accounted for more than 50% of traffic to the site on the Sunday.

Mega Monday (December 2) saw a further spike in orders between 9pm and 10pm, and John Lewis said it picked, packed and delivered over 500,000 customer orders across the network. It also reported that Click & Collect orders were up by 58% on the day, compared to last year, and Collect Plus orders up 88% on the previous week.

Total sales across John Lewis for the week December 1 - 7 reached £144.5m, up 1.8% on last year and up 17% compared with two years ago. The week-on-week comparison at -1.7% reflected the significance Black Friday has in the UK.

The department store chain said home sales were driven by furniture, Christmas decorations and gifts, with strong sales of dining furniture and gift food backed up by its best-ever week for throws and cushions.

The company's director of selling, David Barford, said: "With online sales setting a new high, records have been falling for a number of days but none of this would be possible without a stellar distribution operation or the sophisticated IT support that go hand in hand with the front of house service we offer instore and from our call centres."