Michael Norton, managing director of PayPoint.net looks at how brands can appeal to the modern day consumer with a broader approach to retail.

UK advertisers spent almost £5bn putting their message online in 2011. Search marketing accounted for 58% of the total, while display advertising topped £1bn for the first time.

Internet Retailing is to hold the first ever ecommerce Birthday Party Awards this summer. Some 350 industry leaders and winners of our six awards will celebrate the industry’s 18th birthday at London’s Cannon Street Roof Gardens.

The Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey have said they will not appeal a High Court ruling in favour of the UK government’s decision that retailers sending low value goods from the islands must pay VAT. The move means

Adminstrators running the Game Group have announced its sale to a private investment firm in a move that will save nearly 3,200 jobs and keep a network of 333 high street stores. The move, said administrator Mike Jervis, meant Game would not be ‘another one of the retail names disappearing from the high street in the current difficult climate.’

Flying Brands is selling three more businesses as it narrows its focus to its Gardening Direct business and its Retreat Farm growing and despatch operations.

Retailers must address how the high street can work alongside digital shopping channels, says Play.com’s marketing director, in response to Government plans unveiled today to revitalise shopping areas.

Laura Ashley reported a rise in ecommerce sales at home and abroad as it unveiled its full-year results today. The Co-operative Group and Findel all reported on their online performance in updates to the City.

Improvements to the Thomas Cook website have helped to lift its online bookings by 19% over the past four weeks, the company said this week. Competitor TUI Travel said online sales accounted for 40% of its summer 2012 bookings.

Travel publisher Lonely Planet has launched an affiliate programme as it looks to boost its ecommerce activity. The programme, run with Affiliate Window and buy.at, aims to increase visitors to its website and increase online sales.

More than half of Domino’s Pizza takeaways are now ordered online. Online sales rose by 44.5% during the year, and for the first time it took more than £1m by mobile in a week.

The traditional model of retail is broken and forward-thinking retailers are looking to a future that will bring online and the store more closely together, says Richard Cutherbertson, director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management. He is launching a project that aims to chart the retail landscape, looking at how digital and physical stores will best work together.

Game Group administrators are in talks to sell the company but have closed 277 of the group’s 609 UK and Ireland stores with the loss of more than 2,000 jobs. The multichannel retailer had been fighting to stay afloat in a sector moving fast from store-based sales to online.

Private sales website BrandAlley is looking to mobile and social for significant sales growth in the year to come. The site today reported a 60% rise in revenue for 2011.

Stanley Gibbons today said it expected the internet to be its main sales channel in the future, as it unveiled 72% growth in online sales for its latest financial year. The last year has seen its website relaunched while in the year ahead it will launch a trading platform and move into new international markets both on and offline.

Lovefilm members are now streaming more films and TV series than they rent by post. But while streaming has grown by more than 400% over the last year, the company says it expects many customers to continue to combine the viewing method with rentals.

Thousands attended Internet Retailing Expo 2012 (IRX 2012) this week, which featured speakers from online and multichannel retailers of all sizes and saw some 150 exhibitors showcase the latest developments. The show came at a time when retailers including Tesco.com and John Lewis are looking to recruit IT staff to expand their ecommerce operations.

Just over £1 in every £10 spent in a UK retail transaction in February was spent online, according to the latest official retail sales figures from the Office for National Statistics. We have an infographic to illustrate the rise in the proportion of sales that take place online.

Online transactions at fashion retailer Next now account for almost a third of its sales – and more than 40% of its profits, the company said today. But, it said, its stores still had an important part to play in the success of ecommerce.

Up to four in 10 high street stores will close over the next five years as online shopping becomes more important, a new report suggests. Deloitte’s Store of the Future study says that up to 40% of shops could close as retailers look to rebalance their portfolios in the light of strong and growing sales through ecommerce and mobile phones.