Why more shoppers are abandoning High Street stores for online retail

Jess Bacon hasn't set foot in a clothes shop in years. The 29-year-old culture journalist from Peterborough does all her shopping online, a choice born partly from frustration and partly from practicality. As a plus-size woman, she finds the inventory in physical stores unreliable—size ranges that don't accommodate her body, fitting rooms that feel demoralizing, and a persistent sense of not being represented. "The average size woman in the UK is a size 14 or a size 16," she says. "I think a lot of people just don't feel seen." Online shopping, by contrast, offers speed, choice, and the small dignity of returning something that doesn't fit by post rather than hauling it back to a store. She's noticed something else too: Peterborough's High Street has hollowed out. John Lewis is gone. There's little reason to go into town anymore.

Bacon's experience reflects a seismic shift in British retail. In August this year, online accounted for 27.3% of all retail sales, according to the Office for National Statistics—up from 18.1% in August 2019. That climb accelerated during the pandemic, but the underlying trend predates Covid. Stores are closing. Shoppers are staying home. And now, after years of resistance, Primark has finally acknowledged the inevitable: it is launching a home delivery service in Britain. The company has already purchased a warehouse in Sheffield to handle distribution, though it has not announced a launch date.

Primark's move signals how dramatically the competitive landscape has shifted. For decades, the retailer thrived on the in-store experience—the hunt through racks, the impulse buy, the physical act of shopping. But ultra-fast-fashion brands like Shein have demonstrated that there is an enormous market of people who prefer to browse on their phones. Primark's decision to move online, retail analysts say, reflects recognition that the company must capture that scale or risk losing customers to competitors who already operate there.

The people abandoning High Street stores are not a monolith. Julia Mitchell, 32, who lives near Chichester, finds in-person shopping overstimulating. She describes it plainly: "I basically never go into them. It's not really something I enjoy." She's a content creator who tries to shop ethically, sourcing most of her clothes second-hand through Vinted. She makes an exception for bookshops, which she views as cultural and community spaces worth visiting in person. But for clothes, the online price advantage is decisive.

For others, the barrier to shopping in stores is not preference but physical reality. Sandra Davies, 61, from Sheffield, has had three strokes. Walking through a shop and standing in a queue for more than ten minutes has caused her to collapse. She has tried shopping in person twice and both times the experience ended in medical crisis. Now she shops exclusively online, though even that carries stress—she worries about missing deliveries and the hassle of rescheduling.

Retailers understand that online sales bring volume, but they are learning that success depends on a single, unglamorous detail: the returns policy. Julie Palmer, a retail analyst, says this can "make or break" an online operation. Shoppers expect returns to be free, simple, and fast—a generous window for sending items back, multiple drop-off locations, refunds within days rather than weeks. When a policy is clunky or slow, customers remember and shop elsewhere next time. The problem is that returns are expensive for retailers. Some, like Asos, have begun charging fees for frequent returners, a strategy that risks pushing customers to competitors. Most retailers that do charge still offer free returns in physical stores, a deliberate tactic to draw people back through the door and, ideally, get them to spend again.

Primark's challenge is to match what competitors have already built—a frictionless online experience—while managing costs that can easily spiral. The company has one advantage: it has long been the rare High Street retailer where plus-size shoppers can reliably find their size, typically stocking up to size 22. That customer base, people like Jess Bacon who have felt excluded elsewhere, may be ready to embrace Primark online. But only if the company gets the fundamentals right. In retail, as in much else, the details are everything.