Boxing Day buyers get online or in line International shoppers defied transport strikes and economic malaise to hit British shops on Boxing Day, with footfall in London's West End in morning trading up by nearly a third over last year. Yet even as die-hard shoppers were queuing at 2.30am there was evidence of the more austere mood that has hung over Britain's high streets in recent years. On Christmas Eve 84m shoppers spurned stores in favour of going online and overall spending was only modestly up on last year. "Christmas hasn't been a boom time for UK retailers," said Helen Dickinson, director general of the British Retail Consortium. Sales in the crucial Christmas period proved a mixed bag, analysts say. Among the winners - such as John Lewis, stalwart of Middle England, whose sales rose 26.5 per cent year-on-year to £157.8m in the week to December 22 - were those with strong online channels and similar product line-ups to some of the year's retail casualties. Thus Matt Piner, retail research director at Conlumino, the independent retail consultancy, said the demise of Comet had benefitted John Lewis" electronics department and erstwhile rival Dixon. Others had gained sales as some smaller independents shut up shop and beleaguered Game and HMV pruned their stores. "Overall people are spending only a little more than last year and volumes are flat but there are some real winners and losers," he said. That much was evident on Boxing Day pavements, when fervour to grab sale items, many reduced by as much as 75 per cent, saw shoppers camp out overnight to be at the head of the queue when shop doors opened as early as 6am. West End shops including Selfridges and Debenhams were set to rake in an aggregate £50m on the day according to New West End Company which represents retailers across Bond Street, Oxford Street and Regent Street. Retailers had taken steps to ensure that the critical post-Christmas sales launch was not disrupted by strikes on London's underground, laying on free coaches to allow staff to reach stores by 7am. Transport for London was running a limited service on the Tube, but laid on an extra 300 buses focused on the West End and Westfield's Stratford and White City shopping centres. The action did not perturb shoppers who opted to make their purchases from the comfort of home and racked up record online purchases - not least on Christmas day, when UK internet users made 107m visits to retail websites, up 71 per cent on last year, according to Experian, the global information services company. Experian also alluded to the continuing restraint of shoppers by attributing the growth of online in part to the "sales creep" and early discounting in some of Britain's major stores: on Christmas Eve, one in every 125 searches conducted in the UK included the word "sale" or "sales." Discounted goods, which have been a hallmark of shops throughout the year as unemployment and higher living costs eroded household spending, were in abundance. John Lewis had a record start to its online clearance sale which began at 5pm on Christmas Eve and saw a 70 per cent year-on-year increase in sales in the first hour. Andy Street, managing director, said online sales made up 30 per cent of the total this Christmas, up from 25 per cent last year, and were boosted by the popularity of click and collect, where customers order online and pick up their goods in store. These made up 40 per cent of online orders this year. Tablets proved a crowd pleaser at the store: "Any tablets we could get hold of, we sold," he said. But at John Lewis as elsewhere shoppers were spending across the board, with designer handbags going down well with Chinese buyers in the West End and children - presumably those not clamouring for tablets and iPhones - going retro and pushing up sales of 1980s and 1990s toys such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Cabbage Patch Kids. Elsewhere, tastes proved more traditional still. Greggs stores in the UK's largest inner city shopping centre, the Manchester Arndale, are selling more than 700 mince pies a day, or 22,000 in December.