A study conducted by MarketingSignals has shown that even with the traction that safe shopping online is gaining in the UK, there are still plenty of people who would rather visit the high street to buy products.

Internet Retailing reports that 85 per cent of respondents to the report said that trips to bricks-and-mortar stores would beat the option of ordering via e-commerce sites. Interestingly, there are a lot of caveats to go along with this preference, which perhaps explains why footfall at physical stores is dipping while online sales are still growing strongly.

94 per cent of those questioned said that before making any kind of purchase they would turn to the internet to look up information about the product in question and research its relative quality compared with the competition. 78 per cent said that the next stage of their buying journey would preferably involve a visit to the high street to get first-hand experience of the product.

Ultimately, this demonstrates that there is a need for retailers to offer a true multichannel experience, integrating digital features and online shopping alongside bricks-and-mortar locations to ensure that they can capture the biggest slice of the market.

The ability to buy an item and take it home immediately is the biggest advantage that the high street has over online shopping, analysts found. However, with e-commerce sites like Amazon increasingly offering the opportunity for same-day delivery on certain orders, the gap between the web and the real-world retail market is closing faster and faster.

Brits spend hundreds of billions of pounds online each year, but this remains a minority share of the entire retail market. The future, it seems, lies in joining these two segments together as closely as possible.