Customers ordering from online retailers are now more likely to be kept well-informed about delivery, a study from Micros UK found. However when deliveries fail it seems that information is often lacking.

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.

High street spending will fall by 1.4% in 2012 as more shoppers buy online or from out-of-town centres instead, forecasts Verdict Research. It says councils need to change the way they view town centres, with ecommerce services set to become central to them in years to come.

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

Tate Galleries have launched a new online shop, as the organisation looks to boost sales at home and abroad. Funds raised through the site, developed by Venda, go to support the Tate’s four art galleries.

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.

eBay, Amazon, Argos and Next were the UK’s most searched-for retailers in 2011, according to a new top 10. But overtaking all of these in Experian Hitwise’s list of most sought after brands were Facebook and YouTube.

Nick Fuller, director of planning and development at e-Dialog, analyses retailers’ take-up of new technologies in digital marketing but highlights how traditional channels are still making waves in the fashion industry.

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.

Internet Retailing has teamed up with IBM to find out how retailers are working to understand their customers – and how data is helping them to do that. We’re conducting a survey covering the UK and Europe and would like to invite our readers to take part.

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.

Go Outdoors plans to become the market leader online for outdoor equipment – and has appointed its first multichannel director to make that a reality. Jon Asbury joins the retailer from Halfords.