In the last two decades the World Wide Web and technologies associated with it have transformed the way we shop and do business.

Internet use has grown rapidly since the mid-1990s. Last year 38% of the world's population was online at some point in the year — a hundred-fold increase in usage in 20 years.

In the UK almost 90% of the population has access to the internet, up from under 2.0% in 1995. Three quarters of British households use the internet every day.

This growth has been facilitated by the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, which are becoming the primary devices for accessing the internet. The share of the population accessing the Internet through a mobile phone has more than doubled since 2010, to 58%.

The power and potential of the internet has grown as its user base has expanded. Banking and retail are two sectors which have been at the heart of this revolution.

More than half (53%) of Britain's population say they regularly used internet banking last year, up from 30% in 2007. The British Bankers Association estimates that customers will use their mobile devices for 895m transactions this year, more than double the figure in 2010 and far eclipsing those through branch and telephone banking. This is increasingly obviating the need for bank branches, hundreds of which are set to leave the high street this year.

Since 2007, the share of retail sales conducted through the internet has risen almost fourfold, to 12% of all purchases. Last year three-quarters of the adult population reported having purchased a good or service online.

The Office for National Statistics reports that people living in the UK and Denmark are now the most likely in the European Union to buy products online, with clothes and sports goods being the most popular online purchases in the UK this year.

UK retailers have had to transform their operations to cater to the needs of the connected consumer, researching and purchasing goods and services on the web at any time of the day.

The rise in online sales has created a pressing need for existing retailers to provide customers with a smooth and integrated experience across online and physical stores. But many new retailers have shunned the high street and limited themselves to online stores. Indeed, the share of retailers that sell only through online and mail-order channels has more than doubled since 2008.

Large retailers have invested not only in their online presence, but also in online marketing and the capacity to store, transport and administer deliveries. Tremendous growth in online deliveries has helped drive a more than doubling in the number of vans on the UK's roads in the last 20 years.

The internet has also enabled retailers to track the behaviour of their customers online and provide a bespoke shopping experience – through targeted advertising, by offering personalised discounts and, in some cases, by steering them to certain products based on their purchasing power. An intriguing example of such 'steering' was the revelation in 2012 that US travel site Orbitz was recommending more expensive hotels to customers on a Mac than those on PCs.

While retailers have been reducing their presence on the high streets, warehouses and fulfilment centres are cropping up in the suburbs. More recently, with convenience becoming a growing focus of competition between online retailers, businesses have moved closer to the consumer. Our colleagues in Deloitte's real estate research team see this reflected in the growth of smaller urban logistics warehouses that are located close to residential and business customers.

Our transition to an online economy has much further to run. Radical changes in the way we behave as consumers, and the way that businesses cater to our needs, lie ahead.

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