We’re spending more online, but….

Australians are now spending more than $11 billion a year, in online shopping.

That is a 5.2 per cent bite out of the sales of traditional shops.

The National Australia bank, which produced these figures, excluded cafés, restaurants and takeaway food stores from its comparisons.

It said our online spending, in May this year, was 14 per cent higher than it had been a year earlier.

But the NAB added: “The growth rate for online sales has slowed considerably since the second half of 2011.”

It said the current annual growth in online sales is “considerably lower” than it had been 12 months earlier.

Online sales jumped  41 per cent in the 12 months to May last year.

The bank said research had  also shown that a growing number of Australian fashion retailers are adopting a multi-channel strategy.

They had done that by including online as an additional contact point with their customers.

“The data shows that multi-channel fashion retailers are generating up to 30 per cent of their total monthly sales through their online stores,” the bank said.

It said this shows some of the ways that traditional retailers can adapt to the changing environment and use the online retail market to their advantage.