High street retailers attracted more visitors to their web sites than pure-play e-tailers for the first time in October.

Retailers including Argos, Marks & Spencer and Next, which have both an online and an offline presence, had a combined share of 51.1 per cent of UK internet visits last month, according to e-tail traffic monitor Hitwise.

Hitwise research director Robin Goad said: “Traditionally, high street retailers receive less traffic than their pure-play competitors, except over Christmas and the January Sales period. It looks like this year will be a bumper Christmas online for traditional bricks-and-mortar brands.”

The high street retailers were also more successful at generating traffic from search engines in October, with search engines accounting for 37.1 per cent of their upstream traffic.