Online giant Shop Direct, owner of brands including Littlewoods, Very and Isme, joined the roster of Christmas retail winners yesterday when it posted a 5% jump in festive sales.

It was unsurprising given the festive period has been touted as the one in which online retail truly came of age.

Shop Direct has done all of the right things to benefit. It’s got a highly personalised site, it has prepared itself well for the surge in mobile shoppers and it has quick and easy fulfilment, with next day delivery offered for orders made up to 10pm up to December 23 and a much publicised click-and-collect service.

However, the retailer also has another key ingredient which helped if thrive over this tough Christmas period: its credit options.

New Shop Direct boss Alex Baldock admits its finance solutions are one of its greatest strengths and over 90% of its sales over the period used some sort of credit option.

“We make good things easily accessible. We help spread the cost of Christmas,” he says.

And with pricey tablets being its top seller across the period - 91,000 were sold in the six weeks to December 29 – hard-up customers might have needed a helping hand.

Shop Direct’s festive surge also showed that mobile commerce has played an incredibly important role in consumers’ Christmas shopping.

A whopping 28% of Shop Direct’s online sales came from mobile devices and 37% of its customer interactions, including researching products, were via mobiles.

Last year, the retailer’s former chief executive Mark Newton-Jones heralded that mobile was the future. This year, new boss Baldock declared it was the present.

“The mobile revolution continues to gather pace. People are buying more with it and buying bigger items,” he says.

And with tablets being the must-have gift this Christmas, the importance of m-commerce is only going to grow. Already a third of Shop Direct’s mobile sales came from tablet users over Christmas.

It’s also telling that tablets designed for children were also so popular. It will be no surprise how the next generation of consumers will choose to shop.

Investing in mobile, as Shop Direct have, is now not a luxury, but a necessity, otherwise retailers risk falling behind consumers and what they want.

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