A couple of good (bad) examples of this are the Myer site (Myer is one of the biggest department stores like house of fraser) which looks quite pretty and then you realize all you can do is view the catalogue (page by page of the physical catalogue), you can't purchase and theres no proper search functionality. And the Bunnings Warehouse site (like B&Q) which lets you look through their catalogue again at (sometimes handrawn) pictures of the products and you can't buy, search or even see the prices.
These are on the better side, sometimes these sites just scan in their catalogue pages and put them up as PDFs and call it a website. There are no good places you can go to buy clothes or household goods online, if you search for ages you can sometimes find specialist like for PC parts or fridges, which will transact but then the design and navigation all looks a bit dodgy. Woolworths (one of the main supermarkets) does let you do online food shopping, but will only delivery to certain inner city postcodes.
I think maybe it is because the the country is so massive and the relatively small population is all centred on a few places that the delivery doesn't work out to be cost effective. I've also been reading that maybe the public have privacy / fraud concerns which is more an education and culture thing. Also I've heard that some shops like to set prices by store which wouldn't work very well with the web!
The situation does look to be improving. According to Ecommerce Journal article "eCorner, a leading ecommerce solutions provider, that hosts over 170 Web stores in its Australian SME cluster, reported 90% increase in traffic volume for November year on year." They also reports increase in use at Paypal and Eway (another payment system). There are also a few good comparison site like GetPrice now which make the process easier.
