Improvements to the retailer's web site have boosted customer spending

Marks and Spencer's online sales have increased by 60 per cent following the relaunch of its web site earlier this year.

The retail chain's overall revenue rose 6.5 per cent to £4.2bn for the first half of 2007 while pre-tax profits rose 11.5 per cent to £452m.

The revamped M&S Direct site went live in March, following a collaborative redesign between the store's in-house ecommerce team and Amazon.

"We are pleased with the progress of Direct and continue to target £500m of sales from this business by 2010," said chief executive Stuart Rose.

Investment in new IT programmes continued to help the company's business performance, said Rose.

"We installed new finance systems and also began a major refresh of our store information technology.

"New point of sale systems which will help us further improve service in our stores."

Last week M&S announced a four-year, multi-million pound outsourcing contract with Logicalis.