Fashion retailer Crew Clothing is gunning to increase its online sales by 50% this year as it strengthens its multichannel operation.

The target follows on from a 75% increase in online sales in the year to date.

This year, Crew will roll out iPads to all its 65 shops, allowing customers to order products online if an item is out of stock in store.

The retailer will also use Google Remarketing, which brings customers who abandoned their purchases or were just browsing back to the site. By picking up keywords in their browsing history, Google will place relevant Crew Clothing banner adverts on its network of websites and entice shoppers back to the retailer’s site.

Crew will also advertise alongside relevant YouTube videos and unveil a mobile-optimised website, and is considering introducing click-and-collect services.

In the year to date, Crew Clothing strengthened the links between its stores, online and catalogue businesses to drive growth. It combined the databases from its three channels, and is using that data to build customer profiles. Online marketing manager Frank Sendler said some of the online sales uplift was down to a revamp of its monthly catalogues, which are posted to customers. The catalogues now make suggestions for products, which can be ordered online.

In addition, Crew has made promotional vouchers online also valid for purchases in store, making it possible to track the customer between channels. Sendler said Crew still needed to make stock information more accurate across all channels so tracking was easier.

15% of the year’s online growth stems from analytics software provided by Net Media Planet, which identified key words - such as gilet - on the Crew Clothing site that encouraged shoppers to click on products and made the product easy to find.

Over the past three months the retailer has used certain words more often on the site, increasing the visibility of products.