As the debate regarding online retail rumbles on, a survey about the growth of internet sales of fashion is further fuelling speculation about how shopping habits are changing.

Good news for retailers came recently from a Mintel Oxygen report, which found that online sales of clothing and footwear have broken through the £1billion barrier for the first time, reaching £1.2billion in 2006.

The figures represent an impressive rise of 461% in the past five years and the research organisation expects the trend to continue, with sales set to climb to £2.9 billion per year by the end of 2011.

However, to put it into context, it's important to bear in mind that although online sales of fashion only make up a tiny fraction of what we spend in this area - some 3% of sales overall - this impressive five year growth has occurred from a relatively modest beginning.

Reviewing the main players, the biggest chunk is occupied by catalogue-based operators such as Next Directory, with some 52% of the market, although it could be argued that their switch to online trading had a head start with the necessary infrastructure already in place. Niche retailers - the likes of Boden and Lands' End - make up a further 19%, with the online operations of High Street retailers occupying a similar proportion of the market. Internet-only retailers, including auction sites make up the remaining balance.

The relatively modest presence of High Street retailers, with just under a fifth of the market, would suggest that these retailers have yet to step up their presence online. For example, many sellers of 'value' clothing, a major growth segment of this sector of late, have yet to develop their capability to carry out online transactions online. Not untypical was a quick trawl around Primark's website today, which revealed a list of stores and some corporate information, but little more.

Perhaps some are slow to adapt due to the fact that on-line sales are still a small proportion of the total market, especially at a time when store and people costs are rising, and like-for-likes growing at lower rates.

Although online retailing doesn't necessarily require the huge expenses associated with property, there are still extra overheads associated with online retailing, from initial investment in the website design through to the infrastructure required to fulfil orders.

But on-line is taking a disproportionate amount of the total cash increase in retail spending in any sector and clothing and footwear are no different.

So what's a retailer to do?

This gradual structural change of the retail sector means a website is a business necessity. We are now in an environment where no one can afford to lose market share to competitors. People expect a transactional web-site and, as always in retail it's a case of keeping the customers happy, meeting their expectations and allowing them to shop in the most convenient way possible.

Even if shoppers only use the internet for research purposes at this stage, the ability to 'channel hop' is a useful tool in the fight to secure market share.

And it looks like there are opportunities to actually gain important market share through the internet. A survey carried out for KPMG by YouGov at the end of last year found that 34% of shoppers stated they would never buy shoes online (only slightly behind medicine and fresh food), whilst almost a quarter (23%) would not contemplate ordering clothes. I'll bet that if we had asked this question five years ago, those figures would have been much higher, highlighting that people's attitudes are changing and that there are still potential shoppers to be won round.

Our survey also found that 30% of customers across all retail sectors had experienced problems buying online. If retailers can iron out the kind of irritations associated with using this channel - be it communication problems, missed delivery slots or the ability to deliver at all - surely there's an opportunity to win round the sceptics.

The upshot is what we knew already; retail is a tough world. As I mentioned earlier, structural changes in the sector mean the typical business model of a retailer from 10 years ago has gone forever - multi-channel is now a way of life.