Australian online shopping ramps up strongly

Latest index released by a local bank showed a strong growth in Australian online retails in the year to April, with middle-aged customers dominated the e-market, local media reported Thursday. The National Australia Bank (NAB)\'s Online Retail Sales Index reveals a surge of 21 percent to 13.5 billion AUD (13.07 billion U. S. dollars) in the past one year, compared to 11.2 billion AUD (10. 8 billion U.S. dollars)in the previous corresponding 12 months. As showed, the growth rate of online retail sales have much better performance than the traditional retail sector, said NAB chief economist Alan Oster. According to local analysts, the data also showed the online shopping continued to be dominated by the 35 to 44-year-old age group. \"They\'re spending almost a quarter of the online purchase at the moment,\" NAB economist Gerard Burg was quoted as saying by the ABC news. \"The runner-up age groups are 25 to 34 and 45 to 54, both of which spending around 20 percent,\" he added. According to the released data, the most popular categories sold are products of fashion, daily deals, media games and toys. However, despite the strong performance of the online sales, it merely accounted for about 6 percent of traditional retail spending currently, according to the report, which said the official figures on over all retail trade in April are to be released next week.