Growth in online spending is continuing to outstrip growth in traditional retail, and local businesses are being warned to keep up or face being left on the shelf.
Figures from the NAB showed Australians spent more than $16 billion online last year, with online groceries becoming more popular than ever.
Online spending has slowed significantly in recent years, down from about 30 per cent in 2012 to 10 per cent last year, but growth of the sector continues to more than double that of traditional retail.
The biggest growth sector in online shopping is grocery and liquor, which experienced an almost 20 per cent increase in spending.
NAB chief economist Alan Oster said this was good news for local businesses.
"Despite what you might hear in the media, international online - buying overseas - is something like 20-25 per cent so 75 per cent is actually local," he said.
The most common reasons that consumers were hitting the net instead of the shops were the variety of wares available online, reduced prices and overwhelmingly the convenience of shopping from home.
Erin Giansiracusa has three children under the age of five and she runs an online social network for mums called "The Mums Group".
"Despite what you might hear in the media, international online - buying overseas - is something like 20-25 per cent so 75 per cent is actually local."
She said online shopping was a Godsend for busy mums.
"Alot of mums that are time poor use this service and I think it's great, especially those with a new baby where it's too hard to get to the supermarket, it's a really popular thing for mums I think," she said.
So much so that this Melbourne mum almost exclusively shops online.
"Enough that the postman bought my children Christmas presents. I basically try to avoid the shops at all costs," she said.
But the constant need for essentials means she still has to visit the shops, and for those reasons retail groups weren't concerned about the trend.
The Australian Retailers Association's Russell Zimmerman said the two sectors were growing in parallel, not detracting from each other.
"It is part of retailing it is not an opposition to retailing. I want to make that clear you will find that many, many retailers are offering an online site. That can be the big ones we all know, the Myer, David Jones the ones we all know but what you're seeing now is a lot of smaller independent retailers offering an online service," he said.
But figures from Deloitte shows that some businesses were lagging behind the online revolution. It stated that Australian businesses, particularly small and medium businesses, were hesitant to engage online.
At the end of last year, 24 per cent of businesses had low engagement with customers online and 35 per cent had none at all.
Mr Zimmerman said the reluctance to go online may be hurting them.
"It is one of those things you have got to get involved in, and if you don't I think you will be left on the shelf and I think that is a concern but I also think that retailers will accept that and I think it's fair to say retailers are moving into the online space."
One of those was Paddy Maginn.
He migrated from Northern Ireland almost 25 years ago, setting up a butcher shop with a small range Irish sausages in Kew, just outside of Melbourne.
Today he also sells his snags online.
"Everybody is moving on, they're all on computers now, if they can look at your products in their own house they'll be thinking about it even more and say come on lets order something."
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