Visits to Threshers' website increased by a factor of eight last week on the back of a widely circulated discount voucher, new figures show. 

Statistics released by web monitoring firm Hitwise show that Threshers rose from 103rd to 37th place in the Grocery and Alcohol category. 

The voucher promising a 40 per cent discount is believed to have been intended only for suppliers and friends, but spread virally across the web.

Consumers were actively searching for the vouchers, with the share of UK internet searches for 'threshers' increasing more than 2000 times last week.

The number two search term entered into search engines that included the keyword 'threshers' was 'threshers voucher', number four was 'threshers discount voucher' and sixth was 'threshers 40%'.

South African wine producer Stormhoek, which posted the voucher on its blog on 24 November, saw its website visits surge ahead of those to Threshers, capturing a 110 times larger share of visits than Threshers.

On 28 November, the voucher was also posted in the forums of Money Saving Expert and 45 per cent of visits to Threshers.co.uk came from the discount site's forums last week.

"High street retailers are fighting to win customers by offering generous discounts to customers this Christmas," said Heather Hopkins, vice president of research at Hitwise UK.

"Whilst the Threshers discount was not intended for wide distribution, it shows the power of promotions to spread like wildfire online. Promotions can be used to attract customers and to gather valuable contact details for customers. "